THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


1796-1866 

From  a  portrait  by  William  Carl  Broune,  1859,  in  possession  of  John  Motley 

Morehead  III,  Rye,  N.  Y.,  showing  the  charter  of  the 

North  Carolina  R.  R.  in  his  right  hand 


John  Motley  Morehead 

and 

The  Development 

of 

North  CaroHna 

1796-1866 

By 

BURTON   ALVA   KONKLE 


AUTHOR  OF 

"The  Life  and  Writings  of  James  Wilson," 

etc. 


WITH 

An  Introddction 

BY 


HON.  HENRY  G.  CONNOR,  LL.D. 

Judge  of  the  United  States  District  Court,  Eastern  District  of 

North  Carolina 


WILLIAM    J.    CAMPBELL 

PHILADELPHIA 

1922 


Copyright,  1922 

By 

Burton  Alva  Konkle 


PRINTED    IN    U.9.A. 

PATTERSON    A    WHITE    CO. 

PHILADELPHIA 


,w 


TO 

Walter  Roy  Konkle 

A 
COURIER   TO   THE   FRONT   LINES 

IN 
THE   THIRTY-SECOND   DIVISION 

AT 
CHATEAU-THIERRY 


T  TPT?  APV 


Contents 


Chapter 

I. 

Chapter 

II, 

Chapter 

III, 

Chapter 

IV, 

Chapter 

V, 

Chapter 

VI, 

Chapter 

VII, 

Chapter 

VIII, 

Chapter 

IX. 

Chapter 

X. 

Chapter 

XI, 

Chapter 

XII, 

Chapter 

XIII, 

Chapter 

XIV, 

Chapter 

XV, 

Chapter      XVI. 


Chapter    XVII. 


A  Son  of  the  Piedmont,  1796 1 

Under  Three  Great  Teachers,   1811 12 

Love  as  Well  as  Law,  and  "Quiescere  non 

Possum,"  1819 36 

Lost  Atlantis'  Legacy  of  Problems  to  North 

Carolina    50 

Morehead  Attacks  the  Educational  and  Con- 
stitutional Problems,  1821 63 

Other  Problems  Follow,  1822 76 

Measures  for  Development  and  Its  Organ,  a 

New  Constitution,   1828 101 

Revision  of   the  Constitution  and   Transfer 

of  Political  Power  to  the  West,  1835.     144 

Morehead  and  the  Rise  of  the  Whig  Party 

in  North  Carolina,  1836 170 

A  Whig  Leader  and  Governor  and  the  First 

Railways,    1840 199 

The   Same   Continued,   1842 225 

A  National  Whig  Leader,  a  Presidential  Pos- 
sibility and  President  of  the  National 
Whig  Convention,  Philadelphia,  1845.     273 

His    Campaign    to    Unite    East    and    West 

North  Carolina  by  Railroads,  1849...     294 

President  and  Builder  of  the  North  Caro- 
lina  Railroad,    1850 308 

Building  the  Eastern  Extension  and.  an 
Ocean  Port,  and  Whig  Leadership, 
1856     324 

He  Enters  the  Assembly  to  Defend  and  Ex- 
tend the  Railway  West  and  North.  A 
Great  Vision  of  Transportation,  1858.     345 

Defender  of  the  Union  in  the  State  Senate 

and  National  Whig  Convention,  1859. .     363 


Chapter  XVIII.  The  Peace  Conference :  Governor  More- 
head's  Last  Efforts  to  Preserve  the 
Union,  4th  February,  1861 374 

Chapter      XIX.     In    the    Confederate    Provisional    Congress, 

Richmond,  July,  1861-February,  1862.     386 

Chapter  XX.  The  Closing  Years  of  "The  Father  of  Mod- 
ern North  Carolina,"  1862-1866 399 


Illustrations 

I.     Frontispiece :  John  Motley  Morehead  I. 
II.     Maps  of  the  Piedmont  and  Roanoke  Valley..         1 

III.  Maps  of  Virginia  Counties  Created,  1634  to 

1675,  with   Kent  Island 2 

IV.  Maps  of  Virginia  Counties  Created,  1671  to 

1733    4 

V.     Maps  of  Virginia  Counties   Created   1734  to 

1748    5 

VI.    Lauchope  House,  Lanarkshire,  Scotland 6 

VII.    "Old  South  Hall"  and  Dialectic  Society,  Uni- 
versity of   North  Carolina 24 

VIII.  Map  of  North  Carolina,  with  places  men- 
tioned,   1819 36 

IX.    Archibald    DeBow    Murphey 42 

X.    Book-plate  of  John  Motley  Morehead 49 

XI.     Maps  Showing  the  Origin  of  North  Carolina, 

1665  to  1695 54 

XII.     Maps  of  North  Carolina  County  Development, 

1696   to    1749 56 

XIII.  State  Capitol  at  Raleigh,  1794-1831 64 

XIV.  Map    of    North    Carolina,    showing    what    is 

now    Tennessee,    1783 68 

XV.     Map  of  North  Carolina,  showing  East-West 

and  Valley  Divisions,  1821 74 

XVI.    "Blandwood,"       the       Morehead       residence, 

Greensboro,    in    1921 80 

XVII.     First  "Carlton"  letter,  heading  and  signature, 

1827     92 

XVIII.    Joseph    Caldwell 96 

XIX.    The  Original  Cotton  Mill  of  Mr.  Morehead 

at  Leaksville  (Spray),  N.  C 104 

XX.     Map    of    North    Carolina,    showing    Eastern 

Counties  that  joined  the  West,  1831 110 

XXI.  Map  of  North  Carolina,  showing  vote  for, 
and  ratification  of  the  new  State  Consti- 
tution,   1835 168 


XXII.    First  Picture  of  a  Train  in  a  Xorth  Carolina 

Paper,    1836 170 

XXIII.  Map  of  X'orth  Carolina,  showing  the  Whig 

Vote  of  1836  174 

XXIV.  Edgeworth     Female     Seminary,     Greensboro, 

X.  C '. 178 

XXV.    A  Raleigh  &   Gaston   Railroad   Coach,   First 

Picture,    1838 182 

XXVI.    A  Georgia  Train,  of  1838 184 

XXVII.     Map   of    Xorth   Carolina,   showing  Railroads 

and   Whig   Vote,    1840 210 

XXVIII.     Executive  Mansion,  or  "Government  House," 

Raleigh,  1840   212 

XXIX.     The  Capitol,  Raleigh,   1840  and  Today 214 

XXX.    Governor  John  Motley  Morehead,  1841 216 

XXXI.     Xational    Whig    Convention    Hall,    Philadel- 
phia, exterior  and  interior,   1848 282 

XXXII.     .Mrs.  John  Motley  Morehead,  1855 320 

XXXIII.  Railroad  Map  of  North  Carolina  in  1856....     322 

XXXIV.  Map  of  Morehead  City  (Port),  North  Caro- 

lina,   1857 340 

XXXV.     ?klap    of    North    Carolina,    showing   Unionist 

Vote,    1860 370 

XXXVI.     Confederate   Capitol,   Richmond,   1861-65....  392 

XXXVII.    Railroad  Map  of  North  Carolina  in  1865....  412 
XXXVIII.     Bust  of  Governor  John  Motley  Morehead,  at 

Raleigh    418 


Preface 

In  1906,  when  the  present  writer  was  director  of  the 
patriotic  effort  to  honor  the  chief  maker  of  our  national 
constitution,  James  Wilson,  by  removing  his  remains  from 
Edenton,  North  Carolina,  to  Philadelphia,  the  leaders  of  that 
state  were  so  generous  and  gracious  in  their  cooperation,  that 
I  expressed  the  hope  that  both  Pennsylvania  and  myself 
might  render  some  reciprocal  service  in  recognition  of  it. 

Fourteen  years  passed  before  the  opportunity  came,  when 
I  accidentally  came  to  know  something  of  the  career  of  this 
famous  Carolina  statesman,  Governor  John  Motley  More- 
head,  and  his  relations  to  the  development  of  that  great 
state.  By  a  strange  coincidence,  his  name  was  the  earliest 
public  name  to  fasten  itself  in  the  mind  of  the  writer,  as  a 
mere  boy  in  Indiana  overhearing  a  conversation  of  his 
parents,  in  which  occurred  the  expression  "How  could  so 
good  a  man  as  Governor  Morehead  do  it?" — meaning, 
thereby,  join  the  secession  movement.  Doubtless  the  reason 
why  this  caught  the  Hoosier  lad's  attention  in  those  middle 
'60s,  was  because  he  had  never  before  heard  that  a  secession- 
ist could  be  "good,"  so  he  wondered  about  this  unique  case 
and  remembered  it.  When  the  boy  grew  to  be  a  man,  how- 
ever, and  was  nursed  in  an  illness  in  the  South,  where  he  was 
writing  some  sketches,  by  the  daughter  of  a  Confederate 
Congressman  and  sister  of  a  General  in  her  armies,  the  veil 
fell  from  those  same  parents'  eyes  and  they  saw  that  good- 
ness was  by  no  means  confined  to  one  section ;  while  the  son 
came  to  have  some  of  the  dearest  friends  of  his  life  in  the 
Southland,  and  became  one  of  the  generation  that  knows 
no  South,  no  East,  no  West,  no  North,  but  only  one  mag- 
nificent country. 

To  write  a  life  of  Morehead,  therefore,  became  to  one 
who,  for  twenty-five  years  had  written  on  Pennsylvania's 
relation  to  national  history,  a  unique  adventure,  made  pos- 
sible through  the  exigencies  of  the  great  war.  That  event 
came  at  a  period  when  my  six-volume.  Life  and  Writings 


of  James  Wilson,  and  my  David  Lloyd  and  the  First  Half- 
Century  of  Pennsylvania  were  ready  for  press  and  hence 
delayed.  My  George  Bryan  and  the  Constitution  of  Penn- 
sylvania was  then  produced,  and  was  issued  in  the  spring 
of  1922,  while  the  present  volume  appears  in  the  following 
autumn.  It  is  the  purpose  of  the  writer  to  issue  the  Lloyd 
in  the  spring  of  1923  and  a  new  work  Thomas  Willing  and 
the  First  Half -Century  of  American  Finance  the  fall  of  that 
year,  to  be  followed  by  the  six-volume  Life  and  Writings 
of  James  Wilson,  and  following  that  William  Wilkins  and 
the  Rise  and  Fall  of  Democracy  in  Pennsylvania.  The 
process  sounds  much  like  a  bombardment,  which,  as  the 
congestion  of  issue  is  due  to  the  great  war,  may  be  consid- 
ered perfectly  natural. 

In  preparing  the  Morchead  and  its  study  of  the  great  state 
of  North  Carolina,  many  delightful  friendships  and  cour- 
tesies should  be  mentioned  if  they  were  not  so  numerous. 
A  few  must  certainly  be  recognized,  and  first  among  them 
are  those  of  my  friend  Major  John  Motley  Morehead  III, 
the  distinguished  scientist  and  engineer  of  the  Union  Carbide 
and  Carbon  Corporation  of  New  York,  grandson  of  the  sub- 
ject of  this  volume,  who,  although  not  a  resident  of  the  state 
for  nearly  thirty  years,  has  become  one  of  her  honored  sons, 
a  discoverer  of  that  notable  product  acetylene  gas,  as  his 
equally  distinguished  father,  James  Turner  Morehead,  was 
of  carbide.     Major  Morehead  issued  his  own  beautiful  vol- 
ume. The  Morehead  Family  of  Virginia  and  North  Carolina 
in  1921,  and  his  encouragement  made  the  present  volume 
possible.    In  Raleigh  the  helpfulness  of  Chief  Justice  Walter 
Clark,  Professor  R.  D.  W.  Connor,  Dr.  D.  H.  Hill,  Mr.  R.  B. 
House,  Col.  Fred  Olds,  Col.  J.  Bryan  Grimes,  and  others  of 
the   Historical   Commission ;   Marshall   Delancey   Haywood 
of  the  Law  Library;  Justice  Hoke  of  the  Supreme  Court; 
Governor  Morrison,  Judge   H.   G.   Connor  of   the   United 
States  Court ;  Col.  Samuel  A.  Ashe,  clerk  of  that  Court ; 
Miss  Mary  Hilliard  Hinton;  Mr.  W.  D.  Self,  clerk  of  the 
State  Corporation  Commission;  Mrs.  H.  S.  Gay;  and  last, 
but  by  no  means  least.  State  Librarian,  Miss  Carrie  Brough- 
ton,  and  her  efficient  and  courteous  stafif  to  whom  the  writer 


is  greatly  indebted  for  aid  in  his  long  work  in  that  insti- 
tution. In  Greensboro  also  the  aid  of  Mrs.  Joseph  M. 
Morehead,  her  son  James  T.  Morehead,  Esq.,  Mr.  Victor 
C.  McAdoo,  John  Michaux,  Esq.,  Judge  Wm.  B.  Bynum 
and  Librarian  Nellie  C.  Rowe  and  her  staff  of  the  Public 
Library  and  former  Librarian,  Miss  Caldwell,  must  be  ac- 
knowledged ;  as  well  as  that  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  B.  Frank 
Mebane,  and  Senator  and  Mrs.  Walker  of  Spray;  and  Mrs. 
W.  T.  Harris  of  Danville,  Va.,  as  also  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lindsay 
Patterson  of  Winston-Salem ;  John  M.  Morehead,  Esq.,  of 
Charlotte ;  J.  Lathrop  Morehead,  Esq.,  and  Professor  Boyd 
of  Trinity  College,  Durham ;  Dr.  J.  G.  de  Roulhac  Hamilton 
of  the  University  of  North  Carolina ;  William  Henry  Hoyt, 
Esq.,  of  New  York;  Mrs.  J.  Allison  Hodges;  Miss  Emma 
Morehead  Whitfield  and  Mr.  Morgan  P.  Robinson  of  Rich- 
mond, Va.,  and  Mrs.  Gen.  R.  D.  Johnston  of  Winchester, 
Va.,  cannot  be  passed  by.  Among  these,  the  writer  is  es- 
pecially grateful  to  Professor  Connor  and  Mr.  House  for 
patient  criticism  of  the  text.  He  has  also  to  express  warm 
appreciation  of  the  willingness  of  his  valued  friend,  Judge 
Henry  G.  Connor,  to  write  the  introduction — a  man  of  whom 
Bishop  Cheshire  has  recently  so  beautifully  said — "He 
stands  so  high  that  no  man  can  be  put  above  him  and  few  on 
his  level." 

Finally,  a  word  about  the  maps :  These  are  chiefly  new, 
prepared  by  the  author  from  the  best  available  sources,  and, 
where  originals  do  not  exist,  by  a  constructive  process  based 
on  the  principle  that  if  a  county  is  wholly  derived  from  an- 
other county  the  latter  must  have  contained  the  former — the 
only  mode  by  which  an  approximate  map  of  some  counties 
can  be  obtained.  The  maps  are  designed  for  illustration  of 
the  text,  however,  not  as  minute  and  ultimate  authorities, 
even  though  they  have  aimed  at  accuracy.  That  some  fron- 
tier counties  were  created  to  extend  to  the  Pacific  ocean 
illustrates  the  vague  notions  of  geography  and  the  varying 
extent  of  British  claims  westwardly  at  different  periods, 
not  necessarily  the  legal  bounds. 

BURTON  ALVA  KONKLE. 

SWARTHMORE,  30tH  JANUARY,  1922. 


Introduction 

As  the  result  of  repeated  efforts  by  the  people  of  Western 
North  Carolina  to  secure  amendments  to  the  Constitution  of 
1776,  a  Convention  composed  of  two  delegates  from  each 
County,  met  at  Raleigh,  June  4,  1835.  The  members  of  this 
Convention  were  instructed  by  the  Act,  pursuant  to  which 
the  people  ratified  the  call,  to  reduce  the  number  of  Senators 
to  not  less  than  thirty-four  nor  more  than  fifty,  to  be  elected 
by  Districts  composed  of  Counties  in  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  public  taxes  paid  into  the  Treasury  of  the  State 
by  the  citizens  thereof,  and  to  reduce  the  number  of  the 
House  of  Commons  to  not  less  than  ninety,  nor  more  than 
one  hundred  and  twenty,  to  be  elected  by  Counties  or  Dis- 
tricts according  to  their  federal  population,  each  County  to 
have  at  least  one  member  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
adoption  of  other  amendments  was  committed  to  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  Convention.  The  demand  for  a  change  in 
the  basis  of  representation  had,  for  more  than  thirty  years, 
been  a  subject  of  deep  concern,  and  at  times  intense 
feeling,  to  the  people  of  the  Central  and  Western  Counties. 
The  County  system  prevented  making  this  and  other 
changes  necessary  to  bring  the  organic  law  into  harmony 
with  the  growth  of  the  State,  and  enable  the  West  to 
secure  a  system  of  Internal  Improvement  with  State  aid. 
This  aroused  the  fear  of  Eastern  Delegates  that  plans  would 
be  adopted,  fixing  upon  that  Section,  where  the  burden 
would  be  heaviest,  taxation  for  the  building  of  railroads  and 
highways. 

A  prominent  Western  delegate  said  :  "If  the  West  had  the 
power,  a  system  of  Internal  Improvements  would  be  com- 
menced which  would  change  the  face  of  things  and  put  at 
once  a  check  to  the  tide  of  emigration  which  is  depopulating 
the  State." 

A  leading  exponent  and  advocate  of  the  Eastern  view  de- 
clared that  "Highways,  or  other  modes  of  transportation, 
would  not  benefit  the  West  because  nine-tenths  of  their 
land    is    exhausted   and    not    worth    cultivation,    contrasted 


with  hundreds  and  thousands  of  acres  brought  into  market 
in  the  Southwestern  States." 

Swain,  Morehead  and  other  Western  delegates,  with 
Gaston  from  the  East,  led  the  contest  for  the  change. 
Gaston  discussed,  with  the  ability  and  broad  patriotism 
which  always  marked  and  controlled  his  course  in  dealing 
with  every  question,  the  origin  and  history  of  the  contro- 
versy. The  struggle  of  the  strong  men  of  the  East  and  the 
West,  who  were  called  upon  to  settle  this  question,  the  merits 
of  which  are  so  clear  to  us  now,  resulted  in  the  adoption  of 
the  Report,  fixing  the  number  of  Senators  at  Fifty,  elected 
from  Districts  formed  upon  the  basis  of  property  and  tax- 
ation and  the  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  at  One 
Hundred  and  Twenty,  based  upon  Federal  numbers — each 
County  having  at  least  one  member,  the  remaining  members 
being  apportioned  among  the  larger  Counties.  This  plan  was 
adopted  by  a  vote  of  75  to  52,  the  negative  vote  coming 
from  the  East.  A  sufficient  number  of  Eastern  delegates, 
under  the  leadership  of  Gaston,  joining  with  the  West, 
carried  the  question.  It  is  impossible  to  understand  the  "de- 
velopment of  North  Carolina"  from  1835  to  1860,  unless  we 
read  the  Debates  in  the  Convention  of  1835. 

Morehead,  as  the  advocate  and  wise  leader  of  those 
policies,  was  elected  Governor  in  1840  and  again  in  1842. 
He  was  among  the  earliest,  most  enthusiastic  and  influential 
founders  of  the  movement  which  culminated  in  the  con- 
struction of  the  North  Carolina  Railroad  and  a  system  of 
roads  extending  from  Beaufort  to  Charlotte  and  from  Salis- 
bury to  the  Tennessee  line. 

The  story  of  the  labors  of  Governor  Morehead,  to 
whom  the  title  has  been  given  of  the  "Architect  and  Builder 
of  Public  Works  of  North  Carolina,"  is  intensely  interesting 
and  stimulating  to  patriotic  pride.  This  story  is  most  inter- 
estingly told  by  Mr.  Konkle  in  the  following  pages. 

Recalling  the  pessimistic  utterances  of  the  reactionary 
sentiment  of  members  of  the  Convention  of  1835,  we  see  the 
realization  of  the  vision  of  Governor  Morehead,  Gaston  and 
those  who  co-operated  with  them,  as  eloquently  and  truth- 
fully described  by  one  who  has  made  a  study  of  our  history : 
"The  traveler  today,  along  the  line  of  the  North  Carolina 
Railroad,   sees   the    fulfilment   of    Morehead's   dream.     He 


finds  himself  in  one  of  the  most  productive  Sections  of  the 
New  World.  He  traverses  it  from  one  end  to  the  other 
at  a  speed  of  forty  miles  an  hour,  surrounded  by  every  com- 
fort and  convenience  of  modern  travel.  He  passes  through 
a  region  bound  together  by  a  thousand  miles  of  steel  rails, 
by  telegraph  and  telephone  lines  and  by  nearly  two  thousand 
miles  of  improved  country  roads.  He  finds  a  population 
engaged  not  only  in  agriculture,  but  in  manufacturing,  in 
commerce,  in  transportation  and  in  a  hundred  other  enter- 
prises. He  hears  the  hum  of  hundreds  of  modern  mills 
and  factories  operating  millions  of  spindles  and  looms  by 
steam,  water,  electricity,  employing  more  than  fifty  millions 
of  capital  and  sending  their  products  to  the  uttermost  parts 
of  the  earth.  His  train  passes  through  farm  lands  v/hich, 
since  Morehead's  time,  has  increased  in  value  more  than 
ten  fold,  producing  ten  times  as  much  cotton  and  a  hundred 
times  as  much  tobacco.  From  his  car  window  he  sees  a 
thousand  modern  schoolhouses,  alive  with  the  energy  and 
activity  of  one  hundred  thousand  school  children.  He 
passes  through  cities  of  twenty  to  thirty  thousand  and  towns 
of  five  to  ten  thousand  inhabitants.  Better  than  all,  he  finds 
himself  among  a  people  no  longer  characterized  by  lethargy, 
isolation  and  ignorance,  but  bristling  with  energy,  alert  with 
every  opportunity,  fired  with  the  spirit  of  the  modern  world 
and  with  their  faces  steadfastly  set  to  the  future.  The 
foundation  on  which  all  this  prosperity  and  progress  rests  is 
the  work  done  by  John  M.  Morehead  or  inspired  by 
him." 

But  my  office  is  to  introduce  the  author  and  invite  the 
reader,  who  would  know  the  mental,  moral,  political  and 
social  qualities  and  characteristics  of  the  "rare  individual, 
both  architect  and  contractor,  both  poet  and  man  of  action, 
to  whom  is  given  the  power  to  dream  and  the  power  to  exe- 
cute," of  whom  Mr.  Konkle  has  made  a  thorough  sympa- 
thetic study  and  of  whom  he  has  preserved  a  faithful  and 
most  interesting  history  to  a  closer  acquaintance  with  his 
hero.  Mr.  Konkle  has,  by  a  careful,  intelligent  study  of 
our  records,  made  a  permanent  and  most  valuable  contribu- 
tion to  the  history  of  the  State  of  North  Carolina  and  her 
people. 

H.  G.  Connor. 


with  hundreds  and  thousands  of  acres  brought  into  market 
in  the  Southwestern  States." 

Swain,  Morehead  and  other  Western  delegates,  with 
Gaston  from  the  East,  led  the  contest  for  the  change. 
Gaston  discussed,  with  the  ability  and  broad  patriotism 
which  always  marked  and  controlled  his  course  in  dealing 
with  every  question,  the  origin  and  history  of  the  contro- 
versy. The  struggle  of  the  strong  men  of  the  East  and  the 
West,  who  were  called  upon  to  settle  this  question,  the  merits 
of  which  are  so  clear  to  us  now,  resulted  in  the  adoption  of 
the  Report,  fixing  the  number  of  Senators  at  Fifty,  elected 
from  Districts  formed  upon  the  basis  of  property  and  tax- 
ation and  the  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  at  One 
Hundred  and  Twenty,  based  upon  Federal  numbers — each 
County  having  at  least  one  member,  the  remaining  members 
being  apportioned  among  the  larger  Counties.  This  plan  was 
adopted  by  a  vote  of  75  to  52,  the  negative  vote  coming 
from  the  East.  A  sufificient  number  of  Eastern  delegates, 
under  the  leadership  of  Gastoii,  joining  with  the  West, 
carried  the  question.  It  is  impossible  to  understand  the  "de- 
velopment of  North  Carolina"  from  1835  to  1860,  unless  we 
read  the  Debates  in  the  Convention  of  1835. 

Morehead,  as  the  advocate  and  wise  leader  of  those 
policies,  was  elected  Governor  in  1840  and  again  in  1842. 
He  was  among  the  earliest,  most  enthusiastic  and  influential 
founders  of  the  movement  which  culminated  in  the  con- 
struction of  the  North  Carolina  Railroad  and  a  system  of 
roads  extending  from  Beaufort  to  Charlotte  and  from  Salis- 
bury to  the  Tennessee  line. 

The  story  of  the  labors  of  Governor  Morehead,  to 
whom  the  title  has  been  given  of  the  "Architect  and  Builder 
of  Public  Works  of  North  Carolina,"  is  intensely  interesting 
and  stimulating  to  patriotic  pride.  This  story  is  most  inter- 
estingly told  by  Mr.  Konkle  in  the  following  pages. 

Recalling  the  pessimistic  utterances  of  the  reactionary 
sentiment  of  members  of  the  Convention  of  1835,  we  see  the 
realization  of  the  vision  of  Governor  Morehead,  Gaston  and 
those  who  co-operated  with  them,  as  eloquently  and  truth- 
fully described  by  one  who  has  made  a  study  of  our  history: 
"The  traveler  today,  along  the  line  of  the  North  Carolina 
Railroad,    sees  the    fulfilment   of    Morehead's   dream.     He 


finds  himself  in  one  of  the  most  productive  Sections  of  the 
New  World.  He  traverses  it  from  one  end  to  the  other 
at  a  speed  of  forty  miles  an  hour,  surrounded  by  every  com- 
fort and  convenience  of  modern  travel.  He  passes  through 
a  region  bound  together  by  a  thousand  miles  of  steel  rails, 
by  telegraph  and  telephone  lines  and  by  nearly  two  thousand 
miles  of  improved  country  roads.  He  finds  a  population 
engaged  not  only  in  agriculture,  but  in  manufacturing,  in 
commerce,  in  transportation  and  in  a  hundred  other  enter- 
prises. He  hears  the  hum  of  hundreds  of  modern  mills 
and  factories  operating  millions  of  spindles  and  looms  by 
steam,  water,  electricity,  employing  more  than  fifty  millions 
of  capital  and  sending  their  products  to  the  uttermost  parts 
of  the  earth.  His  train  passes  through  farm  lands  which, 
since  Morehead's  time,  has  increased  in  value  more  than 
ten  fold,  producing  ten  times  as  much  cotton  and  a  hundred 
times  as  much  tobacco.  From  his  car  window  he  sees  a 
thousand  modern  schoolhouses,  alive  with  the  energy  and 
activity  of  one  hundred  thousand  school  children.  He 
passes  through  cities  of  twenty  to  thirty  thousand  and  towns 
of  five  to  ten  thousand  inhabitants.  Better  than  all,  he  finds 
himself  among  a  people  no  longer  characterized  by  lethargy, 
isolation  and  ignorance,  but  bristling  with  energy,  alert  with 
every  opportunity,  fired  with  the  spirit  of  the  modern  world 
and  with  their  faces  steadfastly  set  to  the  future.  The 
foundation  on  which  all  this  prosperity  and  progress  rests  is 
the  work  done  by  John  M.  Morehead  or  inspired  by 
him." 

But  my  office  is  to  introduce  the  author  and  invite  the 
reader,  who  would  know  the  mental,  moral,  political  and 
social  qualities  and  characteristics  of  the  "rare  individual, 
both  architect  and  contractor,  both  poet  and  man  of  action, 
to  whom  is  given  the  power  to  dream  and  the  power  to  exe- 
cute," of  whom  Mr.  Konkle  has  made  a  thorough  sympa- 
thetic study  and  of  whom  he  has  preserved  a  faithful  and 
most  interesting  history  to  a  closer  acquaintance  with  his 
hero.  Mr.  Konkle  has,  by  a  careful,  intelligent  study  of 
our  records,  made  a  permanent  and  most  valuable  contribu- 
tion to  the  history  of  the  State  of  North  Carolina  and  her 
people. 

H.  G.  Connor. 


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Map  of  the  Roanoke  Valley 
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I 

A  Son  of  the  Piedmont 

1796 

If  on  July  4,  1796,  the  Goddess  of  Liberty  had  already 
surmounted  the  dome  of  a  Capitol  and  a  Washington,  yet 
to  be,  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac;  and  she  could  have 
raised  to  her  eyes  a  seven-leagued  field-glass  and  looked 
with  superhuman  view  to  the  southwestward  and  beheld  a 
strip  of  land  about  one  hundred  miles  wide,  lined  with 
Appalachian  foot-hills  on  the  right  and  the  water-falls  of 
every  river  that  crossed  it  on  the  left,  generally  about  a 
hundred  miles  back  from  the  ocean,  and  extending  through 
four  states  and  into  Alabama  at  Montgomery — the  capi- 
toline  deity  would  have  covered  in  her  purview  a  region 
that  has  a  peculiar  character  and  has  acquired  exclusive 
possession  of  the  name  "Piedmont."^  And  in  her  fore- 
ground, her  glass  would  have  easily  picked  out,  among  more 
than  a  score  of  rivers  that  cross  it,  with  their  rich  valleys, 
one  among  the  most  rich  and  most  extensive,  in  its  wind- 
ings, lacing  together  the  two  states  of  Virginia  and  North 
Carolina,  prefiguring  a  time  to  come  when  bands  of  iron 
should  replace  it.  This  rich  region  is  the  valley  of  the 
Roanoke,  which  lies  like  a  great  wallet  full  of  treasures 
toward  the  foot-hills,  with  its  neck  ready  to  pour  them 
through  Carolina  into  the  Albemarle,  if  she  should  have  a 
port  to  receive  it  or  the  water-falls  did  not  choke  the  passage. 
And  could  so  extensive  a  view  permit  the  Goddess  to  see 
things  more  minute,  she  would  have  witnessed,  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  upper  part  of  the  valley  in  the  lands  between  the 
lower  two-  of  three  great  tributaries,  the  Dan  and  Banister 


^Technically,  the  name  Piedmont  is  applied  only  to  the  western  half;  but 
the  line  of  separation  is  so  indefinite  that  the  name  is  often  applied  to  the 
whole. 


2  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

rivers,  on  a  farm  in  Pittsylvania  county,  Virginia,  near  the 
Carolina  border,  the  birth  of  a  farmer  boy,  John  Motley 
Morehead,  destined  to  be  one  of  the  great  figures  of  Pied- 
mont and  national  history. 

His  grandfather,  Joseph  Morehead,  had  been  attracted 
by  the  fame  of  the  Roanoke  Valley,  from  the  ancient  home 
of  the  family  in  the  head  of  the  Piedmont,  just  below  the 
site  of  the  future  national  capital,  a  region  that  was  also  the 
head  of  that  great  peninsula  between  the  Potomac  and  the 
Rappahannock  more  commonly  known  by  the  not  euphoni- 
ous name  of  "Northern  Neck" — a  region  made  famous  as 
the  birth-place  of  a  Washington,  Madison,  Monroe  and  a 
Marshall.  Indeed  the  great  Chief  Justice  was  born  only 
five  years  before  John,  the  youngest  son  of  Joseph  More- 
head,  and  father  of  our  subject,  and  equally  near  in  the 
same  territory  in  Fauquier  county,  the  latter's  birth  occur- 
ring on  May  9,  1760.  Joseph  had  named  this  son  after  his 
aged  father,  John  Morehead  I,  who  had  pioneered,  like 
the  Washingtons,  with  the  creation  of  successive  counties 
as  settlement  progressed  up  the  "Neck,"  from  his  birth  about 
1689  in  the  old  original  Northumberland  county,  to  King 
George  county  created  in  1720,  to  Prince  William  erected 
ten  years  later,  and  finally  to  Fauquier,  created  just  the 
year  before  his  grandson  name-sake  was  born. 

The  tale  of  how  John  Morehead  I  came  to  be  born  at 
the  foot  of  the  "Northern  Neck"  is  one  of  the  most  romantic 
in  American  annals.^  The  father  of  John  Morehead  I,  was 
Charles  Morehead  (or  Muirhead),  who  is  said  to  be  a 
younger  son  of  David  Morehead,  or,  as  he  himself  spelled 
it,  David  Muirhead,  the  distinguished  London  and  Edin- 
burgh merchant  and  colonizer,  who  appears,  in  1630,  to  have 
sent  this  son,  Charles,  over  to  Charles  Fs  newly  organized 
colony  of  Virginia,  as  a  factor  at  Kecoughtan  (now  Hamp- 
ton), where  Secretary  of  State  William  Claiborne  was  a  most 
enterprising  figure,  and  for  three  years  had  been  officially 
designated  to  explore  new  lands   for  colonizing  purposes. 


^  For  fuller  detail  see  the  beautiful  volume,  The  Morehead  Familv  of  North 
Carolina  and  Virginia,  by  Major  John  Motley  Morehead  (III)  of  New  York 
City,  issued  in  1921.  1=^ 


-^ 


bitRiel 


(1) 

Counties  Created  in    1634 


(2) 
1644-1646 


Virginia  Countie  " 
Prepa  I 
Kent  Island  is  shown  on 


(3) 
1652-1654 


(4) 
1656-1658 


;*TED    FROM     1634    TO     1671 

'  the  author 

No.  1  in  Upper  Chesapeake  Bay 


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SON  OF  THE  PIEDMONT  3 

On  one  of  his  exploratory  voyages  northward,  he  was  at- 
tracted to  the  largest  island  in  the  Chesapeake  as  a  coloniz- 
ing proposition  and  named  it  Kent  Island,  then  far  within 
the  bounds  of  that  colony  and  opposite  the  present  site  of 
Annapolis. 

Forthwith  he  went  to  London  and  on  May  16,  1631, 
secured  a  commission  from  Charles  I,  enlisted  the  capital 
of  a  few  merchants  as  partners,  one  of  whom,  Thompson, 
had  been  a  factor  in  Kecoughtan,  and  one  Cloberry  owning 
most  of  the  stock;  and  finally  Captain  Claiborne,  later  in 
May,  set  out  to  buy  Kent  Island  from  the  Indians  and  begin 
settlement.  This  was  the  first  of  many  successive  expedi- 
tions to  the  Kent  Island  colony;  but  within  a  year,  Lord 
Baltimore,  whose  St.  Lawrence  colony  had  failed,  persuaded 
His  Catholic  Majesty,  Charles  I,  to  give  him  the  upper  part 
of  Virginia  above  the  Potomac,  which,  to  the  consternation 
of  the  Kent  Island  owners,  would  place  them  under  Balti- 
more, or  confiscate  all  their  laborious  and  expensive  col- 
onization. The  vacillation  of  Charles  I,  which,  was  to  yet 
cost  him  his  head,  precipitated  a  contest  which  covered  sev- 
eral years  and  made  civil  war  on  the  Chesapeake  between 
the  Kent  Island  company  and  Baltimore's  new  colony  of 
Maryland.  Merchant  Cloberry  was  the  only  one  of  Cap- 
tain Claiborne's  company  who  was  not  discouraged  at  the 
prospect,  and  in  1634,  when  Baltimore's  first  colony  arrived, 
he  bought  out  the  timid  ones,  and  found  more  doughty 
partners  in  David  Morehead  and  one  or  two  others.  They 
sent  one  of  the  partners,  George  Evelin,  over  to  handle  the 
matter  diplomatically  if  possible ;  but  Captain  Claiborne 
was  for  war,  not  diplomacy,  and  the  war  continued  in  one 
form  or  another  for  a  dozen  years,  long  after  the  death  of 
David  Morehead,  which  occurred  in  September,  1642.  Five 
years  after  his  death,  however,  in  1647,  the  colony  sub- 
mitted to  Lord  Baltimore,  although  echoes  of  the  conflict, 
legally,  continued  down  to  at  least  1677. 

Meanwhile  the  Crown  seemed  inclined  to  grant  com- 
pensatory lands  in  Virginia ;  and  Claiborne  and  others  re- 
ceived estates  in  that  part  nearest  the  Maryland  colony, 
namely,  in  the  new  county  of  Northumberland,  covering  all 


4  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

of  the  "Northern  Neck"  westward  to  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
and  about  half  of  the  next  peninsula  below  the  Rappahan- 
nock, which  was  created  about  three  years  after  David 
Morehead's  death.  Just  how  soon  after  this  Charles  More- 
head  moved  up  from  Kecoughtan  to  his  new  lands  in  North- 
umberland county  cannot  be  known,  because  of  destruction 
of  necessary  county  records  in  1711,  about  six  years  after 
his  will  was  probated  by  his  eldest  sons,  who  became  execu- 
tors, among  other  children,  for  his  youngest  son,  John 
Morehead  I,  a  child  of  his  latest  years,  in  the  region  of  the 
Great  Wicomico  river  near  Heathsville. 

The  Morehead  family,  therefore,  had  been  in  Virginia 
for  one  hundred  and  sixty-six  years,  when  the  birth  of  John 
Motley  Morehead  occurred  on  the  nineteenth  anniversary 
of  the  Declaration,  in  the  second  administration  of  the  first 
great  Piedmont  President  of  the  "Northern  Neck,"  George 
Washington. 

But  if  the  tale  of  their  settlement  in  Virginia  was  ro- 
mantic, it  was  not  more  so  than  the  career  of  the  family  in 
Great  Britain,  whom  Sir  Walter  Scott  celebrated  in  his 
Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border,  the  valiant  defender  of 
the  King,  John  Muirhead  of  Lauchope  and  Bullis,  in  the 
ballad  entitled : 

"THE  LAIRD  OF  MUIRHEAD 
"Afore  the  King  in  order  stude 
The  stout  laird  of  Muirhead, 
Wi'  that  same  twa-hand  muckle  sword 
That  Bartram  fell'd  stark  dead. 

"He  sware  he  wadna  lose  his  right 
To  fight  in  ilka  field ; 
Nor  budge  him  from  his  liege's  sight, 
Till  his  last  gasp  should  yield. 

"Twa  hunder  mair,  of  his  ain  name, 
Frae  Torwood  and  the  Clyde, 
Sware  they  would  never  gang  to  hame, 
But  a'  die  by  his  syde. 

"And  wondrous  weel  they  kept  their  troth ; 

This  sturdy  royal  band 
Rush'd  down  the  brae,  wi'  sic  a  pith, 
That  nane  could  them  withstand. 


(5) 
1671-1675 


(6) 
1676-1692 


Virginia  Counties 

Prepared! 
Where  western   limits  were  indefinite  they  were  asl 

according   tJ 


(7) 
1693-1702 


y-i'iL>^-f7-'¥ 


ED  FROM  1672  TO  1733 
the  author 

d,  and  sometimes  stated   to  be  to   the  Pacific  Ocean 
lonial  claims 


(8) 

1703-1733 


(9) 
1734-1741 


(10) 
1741-1748 


Virginia  Counties  Created  from   1734  to  1748 

Prepared  by  the  author 

Halifax,    1752,    west  of   which   Pittsylvania   was  created,   and    Fauquier,    1759, 

are  also  indicated 


^ ^ 


(9) 
1734-1741 


(10) 
1741-1748 


Virginia  Counties  Created  from    1734  to  1748 

Prepared  by  the  author 

Halifax,   1752,    west  of   which   Pittsylvania   was  created,   and   Fauquier,    17S9, 

are  also  indicated 


SON  OF  THE  PIEDMONT  5 

"Mony  a  bloody  blow  they  dealt, 
The  like  was  never  seen ; 
And  hadna  that  braw  leader  fall'n, 
They  ne'er  had  slain  the  King." 

The  King,  in  this  case,  was  James  IV,  and  the  battle,  that 
great  one  on  the  Flodden  spur  of  Cheviot  Hills,  of  Sep- 
tember 9,  1513,  so  graphically  described  in  the  sixth  canto 
of  Marmion;  while  John  Muirhead,  the  Laird  of  Lauchope 
and  Bullis,  was  the  officer  in  charge  of  the  Crown  lands  of 
Galloway  and  his  clan  body-guard  of  the  King,  and  thus 
lost  his  life  against  the  forces  of  Henry  VHI.  This  Laird's 
father,  who  died  seven  years  before,  had  been  Knighted  by 
King  James  IV,  Sir  William  Muirhead  of  Lauchope,  and 
his  grandfather  knighted  by  Richard  III  shortly  before 
1485,  the  first  Sir  William  Muirhead  of  Lauchope;  while, 
during  Columbus'  voyages,  one  of  the  Muirheads,  Dr. 
Richard,  was  Secretary  of  State  and,  twenty  years  before, 
another  was  Bishop  of  Glasgow.  The  clan  began  in  Clydes- 
dale before  1122,  over  four  hundred  years  before  the 
"Laird  of  Muirhead"  slept  on  Flodden  Field  with  his  King, 
and  Lauchope  House  had  a  new  master,  and  what  was  left 
of  the  clan,  a  new  head. 

Lauchope  House,  located  some  eleven  miles  eastwardly 
of  Glasgow  in  Lanarkshire,  Bothwell  Parish,  about  a  mile 
northeastwardly  of  Hollytown,  was  rebuilt  in  the  early  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  "an  old  mansion,"  "elegant"  and 
"tastefully  embellished,"  "a  tower-house  with  walls  of  re- 
markable thickness,"  "the  seat  of  a  very  ancient  family,  the 
parent  stem  of  the  Muirheads,"  and  "gave  refuge  on  the 
eve  of  his  flight  from  Scotland,  to  Hamilton  of  Bothwell- 
haugh,  Murray's  assassin  at  Linlithgow  (1570)"  in  loyalty 
to  Queen  Mary  Stuart,  and  to  the  Hamiltons,  with  whom 
the  Muirheads  inter-married.^  The  old  Muirhead  mansion 
is  still  one  of  the  beautiful  country  seats  of  Scotland,  as  it 
was  a  tower  of  strength  in  the  days  of  the  Scottish  Chief 
who  fell  on  Flodden  Field. 

For  when  John  Muirhead  I,  of  Lauchope  died  his  son 

1  Lewis  Topographical  Dictionary  of  Scotland,  1846;  Groome's  Ordinance 
Gazetteer  of  Scotland,  1903;  and  Miiirhead's  Life  of  James  Watts.  James 
Watts,  the  famous  engineer's  mother  was  Agnes  Muirhead,  before  her  marriage. 


6  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

John  Muirhead  II  became  head  of  the  clan  and  master  of 
Lauchope  House ;  but  it  was  the  great-great-grandson  of  the 
hero  of  Flodden  Field,  James  Muirhead  II  who  had  oc- 
casion again  to  bring  disaster  on  his  house  and  clan  by  his 
doughty  strokes  as  a  leader  of  unsuccessful  Covenanter 
rebels  who  were  proclaimed  exiles  in  1579,  and  thereby 
brought  practical  ruin  on  the  family  estates.  Indeed  he  was 
so  dangerous  to  the  Crown  that  his  son,  James  Muirhead 
III,  of  Lauchope,  and  other  relatives  had  to  go  on  his  bond 
to  keep  the  peace  for  the  remaining  thirty  years  of  his  life ; 
and  this  son  was  the  last  of  his  direct  line  to  own  Lauchope 
House.  It  was  a  younger  son,  David  Muirhead,  born  at 
Lauchope  House,  whose  grandson,  David  Muirhead  (III) 
became  the  distinguished  London  and  Edinburgh  merchant 
and  colonizer  of  Virginia  lands  in  the  1630s  through  his 
younger  son,  Charles  of  Northumberland  county  and  the 
"Northern  Neck,"  and  the  latter,  thereby,  brought  into 
common  use  the  Anglicized  form  of  the  name  Morehead, 
which  came  to  prevail  throughout  the  "Northern  Neck"  and 
the  Piedmont. 

As  in  Scotland,  the  Moreheads  inter-married  with  well- 
known  Virginia  and  Maryland  families,  Charles'  grandsons, 
Charles  and  Joseph  of  Fauquier  county,  both  married 
daughters  of  a  revolutionary  heroine,  Keren-happuch  (Nor- 
man) Turner,  who,  like  Molly  Pitcher  and  Hannah  Dustin, 
is  immortalized  in  a  statue ;  in  her  case,  it  is  on  the  battle- 
field of  Guilford  Court  House,  near  Greensboro,  N.  C,  to 
celebrate  the  long  horse-back  ride  from  Maryland  to  act  as 
nurse  to  her  own  and  others  wounded  in  that  famous  action.* 
One  of  her  grandsons,  under  General  Greene,  was  John 
Morehead,  born  in  Fauquier  county,  Virginia,  on  May  9, 
1760,  as  had  been  said,  and  he  was  married  in  1790  to  Miss 
Obedience  Motley,  a  daughter  of  Captain  Joseph  Motley, 
a  Church  of  England  Welsh  planter  and  trader  of  Amelia 
county,  Virginia.  Miss  Motley,  born  in  1768,  also  had  heroic 
and  tragic  experiences  in  that  conflict:  her  father  was  a 
captain  under  Colonel  George  Washington  in  the  French 

^  It  is  related  of  her  that  she  improvised  what  amounted  to  the  modern  ice 
pack  to  keep  fever  down,  in  the  form  of  a  mode  of  dripping  cold  spring  water 
over  the  wounded. 


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'y5 


SON  OF  THE  PIEDMONT  7 

and  Indian  Wars,  and  was  present  at  Braddock's  defeat, 
while  six  of  her  brothers  were  soldiers  of  the  Revolution. 
As  a  child,  she  witnessed  in  the  temporary  absence  of  her 
father,  the  treachery  of  a  Tory  neighbor,  who  was  leading 
a  guerrilla  warfare,  and,  deliberately  cut  an  artery  in  the 
arm  of  her  sick  mother,  lying  in  bed  with  an  infant,  so  that 
she  bled  to  death  before  aid  could  reach  her;  while  some 
years  later  she  heaped  coals  of  fire  on  the  head  of  her 
mother's  murderer,  by  nursing  him  when  he  was  accidentally 
brought  to  her  home  in  a  serious  illness.  She  often  told 
of  her  old  nurse,  to  whose  care  this  tragedy  consigned  the 
care  of  the  young  children :  Rachel  "had  been  an  African 
Princess,  and,  being  sent  one  day  to  drive  the  birds  from 
the  rice  fields,  was  suddenly  kidnapped,  a  bag  thrown  over 
her  head,  and  herself  carried  away  captive  and  sold  as  a 
slave  in  America.  She  was  faithful  and  kind  and  became 
a  real  mother  to  the  ten  children  when  left  to  her  care. 
There  was  a  boy  also,  from  Africa,  among  the  slaves,  and 
they  talked  with  each  other  in  their  language.  He  often 
said  he  would  go  back  to  his  people,  for  whom  he  sighed. 
One  morning  he  was  found  hanging  to  a  tree  in  the  yard 
and  Rachel  explained  that  he  had  gone  to  his  own  country. 
The  children  wept  for  him,  and  only  Rachel,  whom  they 
loved  devotedly,  could  console  them.  She  had  fiowers 
tattooed  on  her  breast  for  beauty.'"  Miss  Obedience,  like 
her  sisters,  learned  to  spin  and  weave  their  clothes  and  the 
household  cotton  and  linen. 

It  was  she  who  was  one  of  John  Morehead's  pupils 
when,  on  one  occasion,  he  was  teaching  the  young  people 
dancing  and  he  was  so  worried  by  her  that  he  laid  his  bow 
on  her  shoulder  and  remonstrated  with  her — and  made  her 
his  wife.  They  were  a  great  contrast :  he  was  versatile  and 
many-sided ;  could  officiate  as  a  squire  and  marry  people, 
pray  with  the  sick  and  dying,  preach  a  sermon  of  good 
Presbyterian  doctrine,  was  a  poet,  a  soldier,  a  planter,  fond 
of  the  chase  and  social  life.  He  hated  slavery  and  tried 
to  take  measures  against  it ;  and  has  been  described  as  a 


1  Tlie  Morehead   Family   of  North    Carolina  and    Virginia,   by    Major   John 
Motley  Morehead  of  New  York,  pp.  104-5,  in  the  State  Library,  Raleigh,  N.  C. 


8  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

man  far  ahead  of  his  times,  in  morals  and  intelligence. 
Many  stories  are  told  of  him,  even  yet.  His  young  wife 
was  more  disciplined  and  practical;  and  when  he  thanked 
Providence  for  whatever  was  sent,  joys  or  afflictions,  and 
she  remarked  she  believed  he  "would  thank  the  Lord  if 
he  broke  a  leg."  "Yes,  Biddy,"  said  he  with  a  smile,  "I 
would,  because  it  wasn't  my  neck !"  His  parting  benediction 
when  a  child  left  home  was :  "Remember,  child,  death  be- 
fore dishonor."  When  about  eighteen  he  joined  the  Revo- 
lutionary Army  under  General  Greene,  and  was  in  the  battle 
of  Cowpens,  but  was  on  a  war  prisoner's  detail  during  the 
battle  of  Guilford  Court  House.  His  old  wooden  cask- 
canteen  may  yet  be  seen  in  the  Museum  on  the  battle-ground, 
now  a  National  Park.  It  was  not  until  1790,  when  he  was 
thirty  years  old,  that  he  was  married  to  Miss  Motley,  who 
was  herself  but  twenty-two,  and  they  made  their  new  home 
where  "Windsor,"  the  home  of  Samuel  Wilson  now  is  near 
the  Henry  County  line,  not  far  from  the  Dan  River  in 
Pittsylvania  county,  also  near  the  North  Carolina  line,  west 
of  Danville.^  They  lived  there  but  eight  years,  however, 
while  daughters  came  and  their  first  son,  John  Motley  More- 
head,  was  born,  as  has  been  said,  on  July  4,  1796. 

Their  eyes  had  been  turned  longingly  to  a  fertile  section 
slightly  south  of  them,  just  over  the  North  Carolina  line. 
Over  a  half-century  before,  in  1733,  "Colonel  W'illiam  Byrd 
of  Westover  in  Virginia,  Esquire,"  a  famous  early  surveyor 
and  gentleman  of  the  old  school,  wrote  of  it  as  "The  Land 
of  Eden,"  in  which  he  had  "a  fine  tract."  He  tells  of  cross- 
ing the  Dan  river  "about  a  mile  and  a  half  to  the  westward 
of  the  place  where  the  Irvin  [river]  runs  into  it,"  and  pass- 
ing over  a  barren  highland,  "on  a  sudden  the  scene  changed 
and  we  were  surpriz'd  with  an  opening  of  large  extent, 
where  the  Sauro  Indians  once  lived,  who  had  been  a  con- 
siderable nation.  But  the  frequent  inroads  of  the  Senecas 
annoy'd  them  incessantly,  and  obliged  them  to  remove  from 
this  fine  situation  about  30  years  ago.  ...  It  must 
have  been  a  great  misfortune  to  them  to  be  obliged  to  aban- 


'  This   location   is  furnished   the   writer   by   Mrs.    Joseph   M.    Morehead   of 
Greensboro,  N.  C. 


SON  OF  THE  PIEDMONT  9 

don  so  beautiful  a  dwelling,  where  the  air  is  wholesome,  and 
the  soil  equal  in  fertility  to  any  in  the  whole  world.  The 
river  is  about  80  yards  wide,  always  confined  within  its 
lofty  banks,  and  rolling-  down  its  waters,  as  sweet  as  milk, 
and  as  clear  as  crystal.  There  runs  a  charming  level  of 
more  than  a  mile  square,  that  will  bring  forth  like  the  lands 
of  Egypt,  without  being  overflow'd  once  a  year.  There  is 
scarce  a  shrub  in  view  to  intercept  your  prospect,  but  grass 
as  high  as  a  man  on  horse-back.  Toward  the  woods  there 
is  a  gentle  ascent,  till  your  sight  is  intercepted  by  an  emi- 
nence, that  overlooks  the  whole  landscape.  This  sweet  place 
is  bounded  to  the  east  by  a  fine  stream  call'd  Sauro  Creek, 
which  running  out  of  [into  (?)]  the  Dan,  and  tending 
westerly,  makes  the  whole  a  peninsula.  I  cou'd  not  quit 
this  pleasant  situation  without  regret,  but  often  faced  about 
to  take  a  parting  look  at  it  as  far  as  I  could  see,  and  so 
indeed  did  all  the  rest  of  the  company."^ 

And  one  of  their  younger  sons,  who  became  a  lawyer, 
scholar,  and  poet,  years  later,  celebrated  the  region  they 
chose  near  here  in  a  poem  of  great  beauty,  entitled  the 
Hills  of  Dan,  in  one  verse  of  which  he  says : 

"The  world  is  not  one  garden  spot, 
One  pleasure  ground  for  man ; 
Few  are  the  spots  that  intervene, 
Such  as  the  Hills  of  Dan."= 

And  this  spot  which  they  chose,  some  five  miles  from 
the  old  home,  and  not  far  from  the  present  site  of  Spray, 
Rockingham  county,  North  Carolina,  southwestward  of  Dan- 
ville some  twenty-five  miles,  they  settled  upon  in  1798  when 
their  son,  John  Motley,  was  a  baby  of  two  years.^     Here 


^  The  Writings  of  Colonel  William  Byrd,  of  Wcstover,  in  Virginia,  Esqr., 
edited  by  John  Spencer  Bassett,  1901,  pp.  306-7.  This  beautiful  spot,  now 
called  "The  Meadows,"  is  part  of  a  large  estate  of  many  thousand  acres,  owned 
by  Mr.  B.  Frank  Mebane,  of  Spray,  whose  wife  is  a  great-grand-daughter  of 
John  and  Obedience  Motley  Morehead. 

-  The  Hills  of  Dan,  by  Abraham  Forrest  Morehead,  1834,  who,  as  he  wished 
in  the  poem,  does  rest  in  the  little  family  burial  ground  a  few  yards  from  the 
site  of  the  old  farm-house  in  which  he  was  born,  opposite  what  is  now  the 
Powell  Store  and  "Corners,"  in  Rockingham  County,  a  few  miles  from  Spray. 
The  old  farm-house  was  burned  after  his  father's  death  and  John  Motley  More- 
head  built  a  new  one  for  his  mother,  which  still  stands. 

^  John  Morehead,  I  am  informed  by  Hugh  R.  Scott,  Esq.,  of  Reidsville, 
bought  200  acres  on  Horse  Pen  Creek,  on  May  29,  1798;  100  more  the  same 
year  on  Wolf  Island  Creek  Fork;  100  more  on  February  14,  1799;  and  then 
numerous  other  tracts — all  not  far  from  Dan  River  on  these  various  creeks. 


10  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

they  reared  a  family  of  five  daughters  and  four  sons,  of 
which  latter,  John  Motley  was  the  eldest.  Like  Presby- 
terians generally,  John  Morehead  and  his  family  made  much 
of  religion  and  education.  He,  himself,  built  Mt.  Carmel 
Presbyterian  Church  near  his  home  and  often,  as  has  been 
intimated,  he  also  did  the  preaching.  They  early  determined 
likewise  that  their  four  boys  should  have  a  college  education 
and  then  should  teach  their  sisters  in  return ;  and  not  only 
so  but  that  the  older  boys  should  aid  the  younger.  It  is 
doubtful  if  ever  a  family  were  a  better  example  of  what 
can  be  done  in  the  home  as  a  nursery  of  higher  education ; 
and  who  can  tell  how  much  this  plan  of  John  Morehead's 
country  home  has  influenced  the  educational  history  of  the 
State  ?  One  need  not  go  much  further  than  this  to  account 
for  the  educational  philosophy  and  motive  that  the  eldest 
son  came  to  have  after  he  had  had  a  share  in  teaching  both 
brothers  and  sisters  in  it ;  and  the  process  was  certain  to 
make  him  not  merely  senior,  but  the  recognized  head  of  the 
family  as  the  children  grew  to  manhood  and  womanhood.' 

While  the  primary  instruction  was  proceeding  in  the 
home,  John  Motley  had,  in  1810,  become  fourteen  years 
old,  and,  as  Latin  was  the  Apollyon  which  aspirants  for 
higher  education  must  first  overcome  and  no  academy 
existed  in  Rockingham  county,  at  the  time.  Squire  Morehead 
persuaded  his  neighbor's  son,  Thomas  Settle,  a  young  man 
of  nineteen,  who  had  studied  Latin  and  Greek  a  few  months 
in  Caswell,  the  county  to  the  eastward,  and  was  just  licensed 
to  practice  law  in  Rockingham,  to  teach  his  fourteen  year 
old  son,  John  Motley  Morehead,  the  elements  of  Latin,  at 
least,  during  1810  and  a  part  of  the  following  year,  at  the 
county-seat  of  that  county,  Wentworth.  "And  then,"  said 
Hon.  Thomas  Settle,  Jr.,  "between  the  teacher  and  his 
solitary  student,  commenced  a  friendship  and  intimacy  which 
death  alone  terminated."^     There  is  no  doubt  but  that  this 

1  These  children  were  the  five  sisters  and  the  four  brothers,  John  Motley, 
bom  in  1796;  James  Turner,  bom  in  1799;  Samuel,  who  died  in  1828,  and  Abra- 
ham Forrest,  whose  death  occurred  in  1834.  All  but  Samuel  became  lawyers, 
James  Turner  being  a  distinguished  one  of  the  State  and  a  Congressman  and 
State  Senator. 

^  Address  before  the  bar  meeting  of  Guilford  County,  N.  C,  in  September, 
1866.  Justice  Settle  afterwards  became  a  member  of  the  Supreme  bench  of  the 
State  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  His  wife  was  a  sister  of  Hon.  Calvin  Graves, 
of  whom  the  reader  will  see  more  anon. 


SON  OF  THE  PIEDMONT  11 

intimate  relation  between  the  young  attorney  and  his  Latin 
pupil  from  the  Morehead  plantation  was  to  have  much  to 
do  in  determining  the  choice  of  profession  of  nearly  all  of 
the  sons  of  John  and  Obedience  Morehead.  Certain  it  is, 
in  that  period  of  tutorship,  young  John  Motley  showed  him- 
self an  apt  pupil  in  the  languages  and  that  he  got  all  that 
young  Attorney  Settle  had  to  give  and  more.  This  result 
convinced  Squire  Morehead  of  the  wisdom  of  taking  im- 
mediate measures  to  put  the  young  fifteen-year-old  student 
in  a  proper  school  of  higher  learning. 


II 

Under  Three  Great  Teachers 
1811 

In  the  year  1811,  in  Rockingham  county,  North  Carolina, 
no  one  interested  in  higher  education  for  his  son  would,  for 
one  instant,  have  to  speculate  where  to  find  the  proper 
school.  Indeed  the  probabilities  are  that  that  very  desire 
for  higher  learning  in  this  region  was  largely  due  to  the 
greatness  of  the  primitive  institution  of  Rev.  Dr.  Caldwell, 
not  far  away  to  the  southward,  for  here  was  one  of  the 
greatest  natural  teachers  that  America  has  ever  produced; 
and  his  school  had  been  a  famous  one  for  nearly  a  half- 
century  and  that,  too,  imder  his  own  guidance — a  North 
Carolina  Eton  or  Phillips-Exeter  and  more,  for  it  was  prac- 
tically an  academy,  college  and  theological  seminary  with 
this  remarkable  teacher  as  faculty. 

Rev.  Dr.  David  Caldwell  was  eighty-six  years  old  in 
1811  and  still  at  work.  Born  in  Lancaster,  Pennsylvania, 
in  1725,  he  graduated  from  Princeton  College  the  same  year 
that  John  Witherspoon  becamiC  President  of  it,  1761.  Li- 
censed as  a  preacher  in  1763,  he  was  sent  out  as  a  mission- 
ary, the  year  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress,  into  the  increasing 
settlements  pressing  southward  down  the  Piedmont  to  North 
Carolina,  and  settled  as  pastor  of  two  Presbyterian  Churches, 
Buffalo  and  Alamance,  in  the  big  county  of  what  became 
Guilford,  three  years  before  it  was  created  in  1770,  and  his 
home  was  about  three  miles  northwest  of  the  present  site 
of  Greensboro,  which  in  due  time  became  the  county  seat. 
The  young  minister,  now  forty-two  years  old,  had  married 
Rachel,  the  daughter  of  Rev.  Alexander  Craighead  of  Meck- 
lenburg county,  and  their  home  became,  as  has  been  said, 
an  academy,  college  and  theological  seminary ;  while  in  1768 
he  was  installed  pastor  of  the  two  churches,  one  of  the  new 

12 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  13 

school  and  one  of  the  old  school,  a  relation  that  continued 
for  over  a  half-century.  His  home,  with  himself  and  wife, 
became  a  veritable  "seminary"  to  the  whole  South ;  for 
with  a  constant  stream  of  boys  from  that  section  of  the 
United  States,  always  about  fifty  in  number,  he  is  said  to 
have  brought  more  young  men  into  the  learned  professions 
than  any  one  man  of  his  time — lawyers,  judges,  statesmen, 
five  governors,  congressmen,  physicians,  ministers — nearly 
all  of  the  Presbyterian  ministry  of  the  Carolinas  and  to  the 
south  and  west,  for  many  years,  being  trained  in  his  school. 
Indeed  seven  of  his  pupils  were  licensed  by  Orange  Pres- 
bytery in  one  day  and  only  three  or  four  members  who 
admitted  them  but  were  also  students  of  the  venerable 
teacher.  Nor  was  he  merely  a  teacher  and  preacher,  but 
a  great  man  and  leader,  and  he  voiced  the  rising  protest 
against  British  injustice  and  stood  for  the  new  principles 
of  political  science  being  wrought  out  in  colonial  aims  at 
self-government  so  vitally  different  from  those  of  the  mother 
country.  His  home  was  in  the  center  of  that  district  which 
sought  to  secure  redress  of  grievances  from  the  notorious 
Governor  Tryon,  under  the  name  "Regulators,"  and  the 
Battle  of  Alamance  occurred  some  twenty  miles  from  his 
school.  His  influence  consolidated  the  Revolutionary  Whigs 
and  he  helped  frame  the  Constitution  of  1776  at  Halifax, 
North  Carolina.  He  was  an  intimate  friend  of  the  great 
Philadelphia  physician-patriot.  Dr.  Benjamin  Rush,  under 
whom  he  had  studied  medicine  as  an  aid  to  missionary  work ; 
and  at  the  Battle  of  Guilford  Court  House,  also  not  far  from 
his  home  and  at  the  edge  of  the  county-seat  yet  to  be  created 
and  named  in  honor  of  General  Greene,  he  cared  for  the 
wounded  of  both  sides.  Lord  Cornwallis  considered  him  so 
great  a  source  of  inspiration  to  those  who  made  this  battle 
so  costly  that  it  has  been  described  as  having  caused  the 
surrender  at  Yorktown,  that  the  British  general  camped 
upon  his  ground,  destroyed  his  property,  even  his  library, 
and  proclaimed  a  price  of  £200  for  his  arrest.  He  rebuilt 
his  home  and  school  when  the  war  closed  and  his  last  ser- 
vice for  the  state  was  in  the  convention  of  1788,  in  which 
he  opposed  the  new  National  Constitution.     He  was  then 


14  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

sixty-three  years  old,  and  saw  the  National  Constitution 
adopted  by  his  state  in  November  of  the  following  year; 
and  during  the  next  month  a  charter  was  granted  for  the 
"University  of  North  Carolina,"  which  had  been  provided 
for  in  the  constitution  he  had  helped  make  in  1776.  That 
he  should  be  offered  the  Presidency  of  this  new  University 
was  a  matter  of  course,  but  he  wisely  declined  it  and  clung 
to  the  great  work  of  his  life — which  was  not  half  done — 
for  he  was  destined  to  almost  top  a  century  and  was  in 
educational  harness  until  within  five  of  that  hundred  years. ^ 
That  John  Morehead  and  his  wife  were  determined  their 
first  son,  John  Motley,  should  have  the  prized  advantages 
of  training  under  such  a  teacher,  and  that  the  sixteen-year- 
old  youth  was  keenly  ambitious  to  do  so,  in  this  year  1811, 
is  borne  out  by  the  facts.-  Years  later  the  boy,  then  become 
famous,  described  his  and  his  father's  first  interview  with 
Dr.  Caldwell:  "In  November,  1811,"  he  writes  on  August 
4,  1852,  "my  father  took  me,  then  in  my  sixteenth  year, 
with  a  good  common  English  education,  from  his  residence 
in  the  county  of  Rockingham,  to  Dr.  Caldwell's — a  distance 
of  some  thirty  miles,  for  the  purpose  of  putting  me  under 
his  care  and  instruction.  I  had  heard  so  much  of  him  as  an 
instructor  and  disciplinarian,  that  I  had  conceived  of  him 
as  a  man  of  great  personal  dignity,  with  a  face,  the  scowl  of 
which  would  annihilate  the  unlucky  urchin  who  had  not 
gotten  his  lesson  well.     So  I  approached  his  residence  with 

^  Dr.  Caldwell  died  Augfust  25,  1824,  in  his  hundredth  year,  and  his  re- 
mains lie  in  the  cemetery  of  Buffalo  Presbyterian  Church,  of  which,  with  Ala- 
mance, he  was  pastor  sixty  years.  An  adequate  formal  life  of  this  great  man 
is  needed  and  at  some  point  in  the  state,  since  there  seems  to  be  no  portrait 
of  him,  a  monument  equal  to  that  of  any  man  in  the  state  ought  to  be  erected. 
Maj.  Joseph  M.  Morehead  in  a  sketch  of  Caldwell  for  North  Carolina  Day, 
issued  by  the  State  Suf)erintendent  of  Public  Instruction  in  1907,  says  Governor 
Morehead  said  of  Dr.  Caldwell  that  he  was  "a  Jack-at-all-trades  and  good  at 
all."  He  also  indicates  that  Dr.  Caldwell's  course  in  medicine  was  a  "corre- 
spondence course,"  and,  as  we  know,   under  Dr.   Benjamin   Rush. 

-  A  tradition  in  the  family  has  it  that  Mrs.  Obedience  Morehead  was  the 
one  determined  to  educate  her  oldest  son,  and  through  him,  the  rest,  and  that 
she  sold  enough  produce  from  the  farm  to  do  it.  One  of  the  songs  she  sang  at 
her  loom  had  these  lines: 

"I  raise  my  own  ham 
My  beef  and  my  lamb. 
I  weave  my  own  cloth 
And  I  wear  it." 

It  should  be  added,  however,  that  some  attribute  most  to  John's  qualities 
and  some  most  to  those  of  Obedience:  and  as  usual  both  are  right.  It  was  the 
imagination  of  the  one  and  the  hard  sense  of  the  other  that  made  John  Motley 
Morehead  what  he  was  to  become. 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  IS 

fear  and  trembling.  We  found,  a  few  hundred  yards  from 
his  house,  and  near  a  Httle  mill  on  a  small  branch — built 
rather  to  serve  as  a  hobby  for  amusement  than  for  any 
more  practical  purpose,  an  exceedingly  old  gentleman,  bowed 
down  by  some  eighty-six  or  seven  winters,  enveloped  in  a 
large  cape  made  of  bear  skin,  with  a  net  worsted  cap  on 
his  head  (for  the  evening  was  cool),  and  supporting  him- 
self with  a  cane  not  much  shorter  than  his  own  body — this 
was  Dr.  Caldwell.  My  fears  of  him  and  his  authority  were 
at  once  dissipated.  The  moment  he  was  informed  of  our 
business,  he  remarked  that  he  had  long  ago  abandoned  his 
school,  and  had  taught  but  little  since,  and  then  only  to 
oblige  a  neighbor  or  two ;  that  he  had  no  pupil  at  that  time, 
and  did  not  wish  to  engage  in  teaching  again.  My  father 
reminded  him  of  his  promise  made,  many  years  before,  and 
while  he  was  not  teaching,  that  he  would  educate  his  oldest 
son  for  him.  The  Doctor  replied  jocularly  that  he  did  not 
consider  that  that  promise  bound  him  to  live  always,  that  he 
might  comply  with  it ;  and  that  my  father  ought  to  have 
presented  his  son  long  since.  My  father  made  some  answer 
at  which  the  Doctor  laughed  heartily,  and  since  in  a  broad 
Scotch  accent,  which  he  often  assumed  when  he  desired  to 
be  humorous,  or  to  worry  a  laggard  pupil  with  a  bad  lesson 
— 'Weel  mon,  we  must  thry  and  see  what  we  can  do  with 
the  lad ;'  and  turning  to  myself,  said — 'But  mon,  have  ye 
an  appetite  for  reading?'  To  which  I  replied,  T  am  not 
very  hungry  for  it.'  The  answer  seemed  to  please  him,  and 
we  then  proceeded  to  his  house. 

"I  took  boarding  in  the  neighborhood,  and  remained 
under  his  tuition  until  the  fall  of  1815  (losing  a  good  deal 
of  time,  however,  from  the  school),  when  I  went  to  the 
University  of  North  Carolina,  and  was  admitted  a  member 
of  the  Junior  class.  As  I  had  nearly  completed  the  pre- 
scribed course  in  the  languages  under  Dr.  Caldwell,  I  studied 
no  Latin  or  Greek  at  the  University,  with  the  exception  of 
Cicero,  and  that  I  studied  privately. 

"I  was  not  long  in  Dr.  Caldwell's  hands  before  I  became 
satisfied  of  his  remarkable  excellence  as  a  teacher.  He  had 
but  little  to  amuse  him,  except  hearing  my  lessons.     I  ap- 


16  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

plied  myself  to  my  studies  with  great  zeal,  with  which  he 
was  much  pleased ;  and  often  has  he  made  me  recite,  from 
four  to  six  hours  a  day,  parsing  every  difficult  word,  and 
scanning  nearly  every  line,  when  the  recitation  happened 
to  be  in  any  of  the  Latin  poets.  Indeed  you  could  not  get 
along  with  him,  with  any  comfort,  without  knowing  accur- 
ately and  thoroughly  everything  you  passed  over. 

"The  Rules  of  Prosody  and  Syntax  in  the  Latin,  and  of 
Syntax  in  the  Greek,  with  all  the  exceptions  and  notes, 
seemed  to  be  as  familiar  to  him  as  the  alphabet.  His  mem- 
ory had  evidently  failed  to  some  extent ;  and  I  have  some- 
times found  him,  on  my  arrival  in  the  morning,  when  I  was 
studying  the  higher  Latin  and  Greek  classics,  looking  over 
my  lessons  for  the  day.  He  would  apologize  for  doing  so,  by 
saying  that  his  memory  had  failed,  and  he  was  afraid  I 
might  cork  him;  meaning  that  I  might  ask  him  questions 
that  he  would  not  be  able  to  answer.  Hard  words  or  diffi- 
cult sentences  in  the  various  authors  that  he  taught,  seemed, 
for  the  most  part,  entirely  familiar  to  him ;  and  often,  when 
he  would  ask  me  for  a  rule  which  I  could  not  give,  he  would 
attempt  to  give  it;  and  the  phraseology  having  escaped  his 
memory,  he  would  bother  at  it,  like  a  man  with  a  tangled 
skein,  searching  for  the  end  by  which  it  can  be  unravelled, 
until  some  word  or  expression  of  his  own  would  bring  back 
to  his  memory  some  part  of  the  rule,  and  then  he  would 
repeat  the  whole  of  it  with  great  accuracy.  Sometimes,  when 
he  could  not  repeat  the  rule  in  English,  he  would  say — 
'Weel  mon,  let  us  thry  the  Latin;'  and  the  Latin  generally 
proved  to  be  quite  at  his  command. 

"Dr.  Caldwell's  course  of  studies  in  the  languages — 
Latin,  Greek  and  Hebrew,  as  well  as  in  the  sciences,  was 
extensive  for  his  day ;  and  the  facility  and  success  with 
which  he  imparted  his  knowledge  to  others,  in  such  extreme 
old  age,  was  truly  wonderful.  Towards  the  latter  part  of 
the  time  I  was  under  his  instruction,  he  had  several  more 
pupils,  and  among  them  was  a  student  of  medicine;  and  I 
noticed  that  he  seemed  just  as  familiar  with  that  subject  as 
any  other. 

"During  a  part  of  the  time  I  was  with  him,  he  found 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  17 

great  difficulty  in  reading,  with  the  help  of  two  pair  of  spec- 
tacles ;  but  his  sight  returned  subsequently,  so  that  he  could 
read  the  finest  Greek  print,  without  any  glasses  at  all.  I  did 
not,  however,  observe  much  change  in  his  intellect. 

"In  stature  I  suppose  he  must  have  measured  about  five 
feet  eight  or  ten  inches ;  and  in  his  younger  days,  he  prob- 
ably weighed  from  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  to  two 
hundred  pounds.  He  had  a  well  formed  head  and  strong 
features.  He  was  an  exceedingly  studious  man,  as  his  great 
acquisitions  in  various  departments  of  learning  proved.  The 
prominent  characteristics  of  his  mind  were  the  power  to 
acquire  knowledge  and  retain  it,  and  the  power  to  apply  it 
to  useful  and  practical  purposes.  By  some  he  was  thought 
to  be  lacking  in  originality ;  but  I  think  this  questionable. 
He  certainly  possessed  a  strong  mind;  but  the  late  day  at 
which  his  education  was  commenced,  the  great  extent  and 
variety  of  his  knowledge,  and  the  active  pursuits  of  his  life, 
gave  him  but  little  time  for  that  kind  of  reflection,  without 
which  originality  of  thought  is  not  apt  to  be  developed. 

"Dr.  Caldwell  was  a  man  of  admirable  temper,  fond  of 
indulging  in  playful  remarks,  which  he  often  pointed  with 
a  moral ;  kind  to  a  fault  to  every  human  being,  and  I  might 
say  to  every  living  creature,  entitled  to  his  kindness.  He 
seemed  to  live  to  do  good. 

"It  would  be  difficult  to  duly  appreciate  his  usefulness 
through  his  long  life.  His  learning,  his  piety,  and  his  pa- 
triotism, were  infused  into  the  generations  of  his  day.  An 
ardent  Whig  of  the  Revolution,  he  taught  his  people  the 
duty  they  owed  to  their  country  as  well  as  their  God.  Well 
do  I  remember,  when,  in  1814,  the  Militia  of  Guilford  were 
called  together  in  this  town  [Greensboro]  to  raise  volunteers, 
or  draft  men  to  go  to  Norfolk,  to  have  seen  the  old  gentle- 
man literally  crawl  upon  the  bench  of  the  Court  House  to 
address  the  multitude,  and  in  fervid  and  patriotic  strains 
exhort  them  to  be  faithful  to  their  country.  The  sermon 
had  a  powerful  effect  upon  the  soldiers.  As  an  illustration, 
I  may  mention  that  a  Quaker  lad,  who  had  been  strictly 
educated  in  the  faith  of  his  denomination,  after  hearing  the 
sermon,  entered  the  ranks  of  the  volunteers,  served  his  time. 


18  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

returned  to  the  bosom  of  his  own  church,  which  gladly  re- 
ceived him,  and  lived  and  died  an  honored  and  esteemed 
citizen. 

"From  Dr.  Caldwell's  great  age  at  the  time  I  knew  him, 
and  the  consequent  failure  of  his  voice  (never  I  think  a  very 
good  one),  I  could  not  form  a  very  satisfactory  opinion  of 
his  merits  in  the  pulpit.  All  the  sermons  I  ever  heard  him 
deliver  were  extemporaneous.  But,  if  I  were  to  hazzard  an 
opinion  in  respect  to  him  as  a  preacher,  in  the  vigor  of  his 
manhood,  I  should  say  he  was  a  calm,  strong,  didactic 
reasoner,  whose  sermons  were  delivered  with  an  earnestness 
that  left  no  doubt  with  his  hearers  that  he  was  uttering  his 
own  deep  convictions,  and  with  an  unction  that  bore  testi- 
mony to  the  Christian  purity  of  his  own  heart."^ 

The  young  student  of  seventeen,  with  his  year  of  Latin 
and  his  experience  in  teaching  his  brothers  and  sisters, 
made  rapid  progress  under  Dr.  Caldwell  and  was  particu- 
larly good  in  the  languages.  He  was  there  from  1811  to 
the  autumn  of  1815 — about  four  years.  It  will  be  well  to 
analyze  just  what  this  means,  for  it  does  signify  a  great 
deal.  First  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  this  famous  school, 
not  unlike  the  log-cabin  days  of  Princeton,  which  was  its 
model,  had  long  been,  as  has  been  said,  "academy,  college  and 
theological  seminary"  to  many  great  men  of  the  day ;  and  that 
the  young  University  was  still  a  struggling  institution,  not 
quite  having  "found  itself."  Young  John  Motley  More- 
head  and  his  father  looked  upon  it  in  its  old  capacity ;  so 
that  when  he  had  Dr.  Caldwell's  course  for  1811-12  and 
1812-13,  when  a  one-time  lawyer  of  this  general  region, 
then  of  Tennessee,  named  Andrew  Jackson,  was  soon  to 
take  part  in  the  War  of  that  year,  he  was  advanced  enough 
to  have  entered  the  Freshman  year  at  the  University.  The 
decision,  however,  was  to  take  not  only  his  Freshman,  but 
his  Sophomore  also,  and  even  half  of  his  Junior  year,  under 
the  venerable  and  wonderful  Doctor  of  Divinity,  Medicine 
and  Youth,  with  so  wonderful  a  record  as  a  maker  of  great 

^  Amials  of  the  American  Pulpit,  by  William  B.  Sprague,  D.D.,  1859,  Vol. 
Ill,  pp.  265-7.  The  letter  closes:  "Happy  in  the  opportunity  of  thus  bearing 
an  humble  testimony  to  the  memory  of  my  venerated  friend,  I  remain,  your 
obedient  servant,  J.  M.  Morehead." 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  19 

men  out  of  boys.  One  can  imagine  both  father  and  son 
weighing  the  pros  and  cons  as  to  the  respective  advantages 
of  taking  the  rest  of  the  Junior  year  and  the  Senior  at  the 
old  school  or  the  new  one.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that 
young  John  Motley  was  not  many  miles  from  his  home  in 
Rockingham  county  or  that  he  supervised  the  studies  of  his 
younger  brother,  James  Turner,  and  his  sisters,  in  subjects 
which  he  had  completed. 

As  an  illustration  of  what  would  have  been  required  of 
him  if  he  had  passed  examinations  iq  these  classes  in  the 
University,  several  years  before,  he  would  have  taken  up 
preparatory  work :  Reading,  Spelling,  Webster's  Grammar, 
Arithmetic  to  the  Rule  of  Three,  Latin  Grammar,  Cordery 
(a  Latin  primer),  ^sop's  Fables,  and  Eutropius,  Erasmus, 
Selectse  de  Profanis  and  Vocables,  Csesar,  Latin  Introduc- 
tion, Sallust,  Ovid  and  Vigil's  Eclogues,  French  Grammar, 
French  Fables,  Telemachus,  Gil  Bias,  Voltaire  and  Racine ; 
in  Freshman  work :  Vigil,  Latin  Introduction,  and  Greek 
Testament  or  Dialogues  of  Lucian,  and  the  Odes  of  Horace; 
in  Sophomore  work :  Cicero,  Geography,  Arithmetic,  Web- 
ster's Grammar,  Syntax  and  Lowth's  Grammar,  the  Satires, 
Epistles  and  Horace's  Art  of  Poetry;  and  half  of  the  follow- 
ing Junior  work :  Ewing's  Synopsis,  Algebra  and  Ferguson's 
Astronomy,  or  in  place  of  the  last  mentioned :  Junior  Al- 
gebra, Euclid,  Trigonometry,  Heights  and  Distances,  Navi- 
gation and  Logarithms.^ 

There  were  probably  other  reasons  why  John  Motley 
Morehead  and  his  father  kept  him  here  so  long.  The  Uni- 
versity was  having  a  reputation  for  absence  of  discipline  and 
the  students  a  kind  of  life  that  was  not  to  be  found  in  this 
old  school  near  the  scenes  of  General  Greene's  and  Corn- 
wallis'  conflict.  Dr.  Caldwell,  says  Dean  Charles  Le  Raper 
of  the  University  Graduate  School,-  "was  a  thorough  scholar 
and  had  great  tact  in  managing  boys.  He  knew  the  correct 
theories  of  life  and  education  and  had  a  wonderful  faculty 
in  imparting  instruction.    His  mode  of  discipline  was  very 

^  These,  according  to  Battle's  History  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina, 
were  the  subjects  of  those  respective  examinations  about  a  decade  before.  Vol. 
I,  pp.  168-9. 

^  The  Church  and  Private  Schools  of  North  Carolina,  p.  42. 


20  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

peculiar  to  himself  and  very  effective.  He  did  not  use  the 
rod,  nor  is  there  any  record  of  his  ever  having  expelled  a 
single  student.  His  scholarship  and  character  commanded 
their  utmost  respect.  His  disposition  was  of  such  a  unique 
kind  that  he  would  give  rebukes  and  corrections  never  to  be 
forgotten;  and  such  rebukes  never  won  the  ill-will  of  the 
pupil  towards  him.  His  countenance  and  manners,  calmness 
and  humor  won  their  hearts.  He  knew  how  to  inspire 
deep  thoughts  and  great  deeds  in  the  boy.  This  was  a 
school  without  a  single  parallel  in  North  Carolina,"  and  he 
adds  that  he  knew  of  but  one  other  such  in  the  entire 
thirteen  states.  "Think,"  he  continues,  "of  such  a  char- 
acter in  a  log  school  house,  a  double-storied  one  with  a 
chimney  in  the  middle,  which  was  built  in  his  own  yard, 
pouring  out  his  deep  life  to  about  fifty  boys  or  young  men 
in  those  early  times  of  darkness,  and  this,  too,  year  after 
year  for  a  long  while" — practically  a  half-century,  even 
allowing  for  its  closing  during  part  of  the  Revolution.  He 
was  beloved  and  venerated  by  every  student  and  more  than 
one  has  made  a  pilgrimage  to  his  grave. 

Such  was  the  place  that  nurtured  young  Morehead  for 
four  profoundly  influential  years,  when  he  decided,  late  in 
1815,  to  go  to  the  University  of  North  Carolina  and  enter 
soon  after  Christmas  in  the  middle  of  the  Junior  year,  or 
as  a  "Junior  Sophister"  half-advanced.  This  institution, 
as  the  State  University,  had  been  provided  for  in  the  State 
Constitution  of  1776,  and  chartered,  as  has  been  said,  in 
1789,  with  the  adoption  of  the  National  Constitution,  and 
its  Presidency  was  offered  to  this  venerable  educator.  They 
had  endeavored  to  locate  it,  like  they  had  Raleigh,  the  capi- 
tal, as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  center  of  the  commonwealth. 
They  chose,  therefore,  a  site  about  twenty-five  miles  north- 
west of  the  capital,  "as  the  crow  flies,"  on  an  elevation  of 
Laurentian  granite  known  as  Point  Prospect,  or,  more  col- 
loquially, "Piney  Prospect,"  about  500  feet  above  sea-level 
and  at  the  crossing  of  the  old  highway  from  Pittsboro  to 
Petersburg,  Virginia,  and  the  one  from  Greensboro,  through 
Raleigh  eastward,  to  Newbern  with  its  river  flowing  into 
Pamlico  Sound.     It  was  in  an  oak  forest,  with  a  wealth  of 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  21 

springs  and  even  the  beautiful  rhododendron  of  the  moun- 
tains. At  first  designing  the  institution  as  one  long  building 
facing  east — one  exactly  like  the  well-known  institution  on 
Dix  Hill,  at  Raleigh — with  a  broad  avenue  from  its  main  en- 
trance to  Point  Prospect,  they  first  built  the  north  wing, 
which,  when  the  Princetonians  in  the  faculty  became  domi- 
nant, gave  way  to  the  English  Quadrangle  plan,  so  that  the 
north  wing  became  "East  Hall,"  or  "Old  East,"  and  by 
1814  "Old  South"  facing  north  on  the  "Quad,"  was  ready 
for  students  as  the  main  building.  Into  one  of  its  rooms, 
with  four  in  a  room.  Dr.  David  Caldwell's  half-advanced 
"Junior  Sophister,"  John  Motley  Morehead,  a  fine  big  fel- 
low of  eighteen  and  a  half  years,  with  the  Scotch  sandy 
complexion  and  hair  of  his  ancestry,  was  to  come  about  a 
year  or  so  later.^ 

When  Dr.  David  Caldwell  had  declined  the  Presidency 
of  the  University,  the  trustees,  doubtless  hoping  that  he 
might  yet  be  influenced,  did  not  fill  the  office  but  gave  execu- 
tive functions  to  the  Faculty,  designating  one  of  them  as 
"Presiding  Professor."  In  the  very  year  that  young  More- 
head  was  born,  the  then  Presiding  Professor  Harris,  wishing 
to  be  relieved,  recommended  the  calling  of  a  Princeton 
college-mate  of  his,  graduated  the  year  before  he  did,  named 
Joseph  Caldwell,  but  of  no  relation  to  the  great  Guilford 
county  teacher.  The  young  Princetonian  was  a  native  of 
New  Jersey,  a  posthumous  child  of  his  Scotch-Irish  phy- 
sician father,  and  reared  by  his  widowed  Hugenot  mother, 
who  saw  that  he  graduated  in  1791  with  the  Latin  Saluta- 
tory. Becoming  a  teacher,  young  Caldwell  was  soon  re- 
called to  Princeton  as  a  tutor,  meanwhile  studying  theology, 
and  securing  a  license  to  preach  in  1796.  He  accepted  a 
unanimous  call  to  become  Professor  of  Mathematics  at  the 
new  institution  at  the  cross-roads  of  Chapel  Hill,  and  buying 
a  horse  and  sulky  with  box  under  the  seat  for  supplies,  he 
set  out  on  a  trip  which  was  to  last  a  month,  coming  down 
the  Petersburg  road  onto  the  campus  in  the  woods  on  Oc- 
tober 31st,  of  that  year.  The  primitive  conditions  dis- 
couraged him  but  put  him  on  his  mettle,  and  during  the 

1  Battle's  Hist,  of  U.  of  N.  C,  Vol.  I,  p.  125. 


22  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

following  month  he  took  up  the  work  of  his  chair,  and  also 
succeeded  his  predecessor  as  Presiding  Professor.  Profes- 
sor Caldwell  had  experiences  in  trying  to  avoid  the  office  of 
executive,  but  his  striking  ability  to  meet  crises  in  the  grow- 
ing University  was  so  effective  that,  by  1804,  the  trustees 
were  fully  convinced  that  they  had,  in  Professor  Caldwell, 
not  only  a  great  teacher  and  an  able  executive,  but,  what  was 
equally  to  the  point,  an  educational  statesman.  It  was  due 
to  the  wisdom  of  the  distinguished  scholar,  jurist  and  states- 
man, William  Gaston,  and  another  able  trustee,  Duncan 
Cameron,  that  this  happy  result  was  brought  about.  The 
new  office  was  then  first  distinguished  by  the  black  gown. 
President  Caldwell  rose  to  the  occasion  and  set  before  him- 
self a  new  North  Carolina  Princeton,  modifying  the  ten- 
dencies toward  the  sciences  that  had  come  through  influences 
of  General  Davie  and  from  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 
His  progress  in  gathering  a  strong  and  permanent  faculty 
about  him  was  as  difficult  as  the  statesmanship  that  pro- 
duced the  physical  side  of  the  University;  and  the  efforts 
to  establish  discipline  and  custom  were  no  easier.  It  is 
not  the  purpose  to  enter  greatly  into  the  story  of  University 
development,  further  than  to  appreciate  the  influence  of 
this  great  educator  upon  his  new  pupil. 

One  can  hardly  realize  at  this  distance  of  time  how  much 
of  an  influence  the  French  thought  of  Paine,  Voltaire  and 
others  was,  that  took  advantage  of  the  great  democratic 
movement  led  by  Jefferson.  They  affected  educational, 
religious  and  political  theory  in  everything  that  came  up  in 
University  life.  One  man  at  this  time  claimed  that  there 
was  but  one  or  two  democrats  among  thirty  trustees.  All 
of  this,  however,  only  served  to  develop  the  statesmanship 
of  President  Caldwell,  and  he  held  his  own  with  the  ablest 
opponent.  'Tt  is  the  very  nature  of  a  place  of  public  edu- 
cation," he  wrote,  "to  polish  and  give  play  to  the  springs 
of  human  action,  to  spread  abroad  a  desire  of  information, 
a  spirit  of  active  enterprise,  and  the  instruments  of  interest, 
which  must,  without  it,  be  buried  in  some  distant  part  of 
the  world."  And  his  theory  was  exemplified  in  himself  and 
his  policies  to  a  remarkable  degree.     He  had  much  of  the 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  23 

modern  university  spirit,  like  that  of  Wisconsin,  which 
turned  trained  thought  to  development  of  the  state  in  both 
theory  and  policy,  and  application  of  the  sciences — even 
though  the  school  was  pathetically  small  at  this  time.  One 
of  his  graduates  of  1799,  Archibald  Debow  Murphy,  at  this- 
time  a  lawyer  in  Hillsboro,  a  few  miles  away,  was  even  then 
preparing  to  lead  the  state  in  almost  every  phase  of  public 
development  according  to  the  fructifying  principles  of  Presi- 
dent Caldwell.  The  young  man  was  at  this  very  time  pre- 
paring to  advocate  measures  of  public  advancement  in  a 
multitude  of  ways ;  but,  of  him,  more  anon.  He  had  re- 
ceived many  of  these  impulses  from  his  friend  the  University 
President  and  often  longed  for  the  academic  shades  with 
him. 

And  President  Caldwell,  in  1810,  saw  that  recognition 
was  given  the  venerable  Guilford  county  teacher,  then 
seventy-five  years  old,  by  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity; 
and  it  is  interesting,  though  pathetic,  to  see  that  the  Faculty 
consisted  of  but  the  President,  one  Professor  and  two 
Tutors.  These  were  critical  days  in  every  way,  so  much  so, 
that  in  1812,  the  President  insisted  on  being  relieved  of  the 
executive  office.  At  this  time,  the  Raleigh  Register  described 
the  institution:  "In  six  months  the  Principal  (South) 
Building  will  be  ready  for  the  reception  of  inhabitants. 
There  will  then  be  accommodations  for  eighty  students. 
There  will  be  separate  halls  for  the  Dialectic  and  Philan- 
thropic Societies,  one  for  the  library,  and  a  Public  Hall  for 
Prayers.  Each  of  the  Society  libraries  contains  800  to  1000 
volumes.  A  society  has  been  recently  formed  for  the  study 
of  sacred  music.  An  organ  ordered  to  be  built  in  New  York 
is  already  finished.  Public  worship  is  held  every  Sunday  in 
Person  Hall,  which  students  are  bound  to  attend.  The 
Faculty  consists  of  a  President,  three  Professors  and  one 
Tutor.  .  .  .  The  sessions  run  as  follows :  The  first 
from  1st  of  January  to  24th  of  May.  The  second  from 
the  20th  of  June  to  the  15th  of  November."  The  expenses 
of  "diet,"  tuition,  room-rent,  servant  hire,  library,  washing, 
candles  and  wood,  and  bed  total  only  $58.50.^ 

^  Battle's  History  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina,  Vol.  I,  p.  230. 


24  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

So  he  became  Professor  Caldwell  again  under  President 
Robert  H.  Chapman,  a  "Peace  Federalist,"  who  was  in- 
augurated in  January,  1813,  at  a  time  when  the  college 
students  were  in  no  small  measure  neither  ''Federalist"  nor 
tolerant  of  "peace"  with  the  hated  British  empire.  And 
they  were  for  the  North  Carolina  Tennessean  who  was 
then  carrying  on  a  campaign  with  Georgia  Indians,  who  had 
been  encouraged  by  the  British,  and  preparing  for  the  ex- 
pected British  attack  on  the  Gulf  Coast.  The  unhappy  ex- 
periences of  General  Andrew  Jackson  in  the  west  during 
the  year  did  not  tend  to  lessen  this  feeling,  and,  just  a  year 
later,  January,  1814,  the  "Anti-Federalist"  student  element 
made  mid-night  raids  on  President  Chapman's  stable,  creat- 
ing for  him  a  horse  with  hair-less  tail,  hiding  his  cart, 
over-throwing  an  out-house,  secreting  his  gates,  and  finally 
tarring  and  feathering  the  gate-post,  leaving  a  written  warn- 
ing on  the  feathery  entrance  that  Toryism  in  a  certain  high 
officer  might  be  dealt  with  in  like  manner!^  Ex-President 
Caldwell  was  in  no  mood  to  stand  idly  by  and  endure  this 
procedure  and  he  at  once,  forgeting  his  legal  history,  called 
into  use  "general  warrants"  of  the  state  that  struck  panic 
to  the  hearts  of  students  and  parents  alike.  All  elements 
of  the  student  body  were  examined,  most  of  whom  became 
famous,  among  them  being  John  Y.  Mason,  Francis  A. 
Thornton,  Thomas  J.  Haywood,  Francis  L.  Hawks,  David 
F.  Caldwell,  Charles  L.  Hinton,  Charles  Manly,  and  Willie 
(pronounced  Wylie)  P.  Magnum.  The  drastic  action  of 
Professor  Caldwell  saved  the  day  and  the  year.  The  insti- 
tution was  growing,  too,  for  while  the  average  attendance 
of  the  collegiate  department  had  been  but  52  under  Presi- 
dent Caldwell,  it  was  88  under  President  Chapman ;  and  the 
graduates  averaged  respectively  6  and  16.  Under  the  latter 
also,  the  Bible  became  a  required  text-book  in  the  courses ; 
and  it  was  under  his  leadership  that  the  Chapel  Hill  Pres- 
byterian Church  was  organized.  Like  Ex-President  Cald- 
well, who  lost  both  wife  and  daughter  during  his  term. 
President  Chapman  lost  his  daughter;  but  he  was  honored. 


}  Battle's  Hi^.  of  U.  of  N.  C.  Vol.  I,  pp.  234-5.     The  British  burned  the 
Capitol  at  Washington  in  August  following. 


Old  South   Hall 
The  Moreliead  rocim  opposite  one  with  last  two  second  thicjr  windows  un  the  ri^lu 


Dialectic  Literary  Society  Hall,  1922 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  25 

during  1815,  with  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  by 
Williams  College,  Massachusetts. 

Therefore,  the  University  was,  in  a  sense,  in  a  pros- 
perous condition  in  January,  1816,  with  the  stimulus  of  the 
war  of  1812-14  to  all  sorts  of  activity  in  education,  religion, 
internal  improvement — especially  transportation — and  a 
post-Revolutionary  generation  coming  to  its  own,  when 
young  John  Motley  Morehead,  a  Presbyterian  and  a  Federal- 
ist in  sympathy,  entered  the  Junior  Class  "half-advanced," 
and  took  up  his  residence  in  one  of  the  rooms  in  "Old 
South"  Hall/  One  of  the  tutors  under  Dr.  Chapman  has 
left  testimony  that  he  had  "introduced  a  most  salutary  moral 
change"  into  University  life,'  and  doubtless  young  More- 
head  became  an  attendant  of  the  church  the  President  or- 
ganized. The  new  Junior  joined  the  Dialectic  Society  rather 
than  the  Philanthropic,  doubtless  because  that  literary  or- 
ganization was  then  dominated  more  by  Federalist  members. 
There  was  a  mutual  attraction  between  him  and  his  Mathe- 
matical teacher.  Professor  Caldwell,  from  the  first,  and 
when  the  June  Commencement  arrived  he  was  to  see  the 
degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  conferred  on  that  member  of 
the  Faculty.  The  graduate  of  that  year  to  become  most 
famous  was  John  Y.  Mason,  who  became  Attorney-General 
of  the  United  States  and  Secretary  of  the  Navy  under 
President  Polk  (who  was  a  student  of  the  University  at  this 
time)  and  was  President  Pierce's  Minister  to  France  who 
became  one  of  the  authors,  with  Buchanan,  of  the  famous 
"Ostend  Manifesto." 

It  should  be  remarked  that  practically  continuous  ses- 
sions of  the  University,  excepting  for  a  brief  vacation  of 
about  a  month  each  at  Christmas  and  in  June,  was  due  to 
the  fact  that  because  of  primitive  transportation  facilities 

1  The  identification  of  this  date  has  been  made  diflBcult  by  confusing  and 
conflicting  statements  of  authorities,  but  it  is  believed  this  is  accurate.  The  term 
"lirst  session"  as  applied  to  those  beginning  in  January  is  also  confusing  in  de- 
termining the  middle  of  the  Junior  year,  when  commencement  is  held  in  June; 
but  the   facts  work   out  consistently.      He  was  a   Presbyterian   adherent   only. 

The  "Old  South"  is  now  practically  as  it  was  in  those  days,  even  while 
most  of  the  University  buildings  are  thoroughly  up  to  date  and  being  made 
more  so  under  the  current  administration.  The  picture  of  John  Motley  More- 
head's  room  was  taken  in   1922. 

2  Rev.  Dr.  James  E.  Morrison,  grandfather  of  President  Charles  W.  Dab- 
ney   of   Cincinnati   Universitj'. 


26  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

and  long  distance  from  home,  the  student  came  and  staid 
continuously  for  the  whole  four  years.  This  was,  of  course, 
probably  not  the  case  with  young  Morehead,  for  his  home 
was  only  about  fifty  miles  away,  "as  the  crow  flies."  Ap- 
parently his  brother,  James  Turner  Morehead,  was  a  Sopho- 
more the  latter  part  of  the  year,  for  he  entered  in  the  Class 
of  1819;  and  both  were  to  witness  a  still  more  serious  po- 
litical out-break  among  the  students  on  September  18th,  so 
serious  that  it  was  to  lead  to  President  Chapman's  voluntary 
resignation.  A  Newbern  student,  and  of  a  family  that  wor- 
shiped at  the  shrine  of  the  Sage  of  Monticello,  had  handed 
in  an  oration  with  a  sentence  or  so  of  his  "Republican" — 
as  his  party  was  called  then — doctrine.  This  President 
Chapman  forbade  him  to  use  in  his  delivery  of  the  oration ; 
but,  on  his  appearance  upon  the  platform  the  young  Jef- 
fersonian  defied  his  Federalist  President  by  using  the  for- 
bidden sentences.  Thereupon  Dr.  Chapman  ordered  him  to 
sit  down,  but,  encouraged  by  cries  of  "Go  on!"  and  his 
prompter  joining  in  the  insurrection,  he  finished  his  speech 
amidst  applause;  and  a  large  body  of  students  met  next  day 
in  the  chapel  and  approved  his  conduct!  Instantly  the 
Faculty  summoned  46  of  them,  suspended  the  orator  and 
his  leader,  and  two  others.  The  rest  were  permitted  to 
resume  standing  on  a  signed  retraction  of  their  offense;  and 
among  the  signers  were  students  who  became  known  to  fame 
as  Chancellor  William  Mercer  Green,  of  the  University  of 
the  South,  and  Governor  Wm.  D.  Moseley,  first  chief  ex- 
ecutive of  Florida.  As  in  other  events  of  life,  John  Motley 
Morehead  seems  to  have  been  one  among  those  students 
who  did  not  lose  his  head.  He  was  also  a  senior,  as  was  the 
oft'ending  Jeffersonian  orator,  and,  as  has  been  intimated, 
was  a  Federalist,  which  would  probably  account  for  his  ease 
in  retaining  his  poise.  Public  opinion,  however,  was  so 
divided  on  the  course  of  the  President  in  carrying  out  the 
Trustees'  rule  that  there  should  be  no  political  speeches, 
that  when,  during  the  following  month,  some  student  made 
a  bomb  out  of  a  brass  knob  and  exploded  it  before  a  tutor's 
door,  fortunately  without  in  jurying  anyone  although  it  ex- 
ploded in  the  hands  of  one  who  attempted  to  throw  it  out. 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  27 

President  Chapman  waited  until  the  November  meeting  of 
the  Trustees  and  resigned,  the  Board  making  it  effective 
immediately.  The  Jeff'ersonian  orator  was  a  member  of 
the  Philanthropic  Society,  of  which  society  a  Dialectic  mem- 
ber wrote  at  this  time:  "The  poor  Philanthropic  members 
are  to  be  pitied,  for  they  have  but  thirteen  members ;"  but 
another  more  cautious  Dialectic  later  wrote  that  the  member- 
ship "though  increasing  in  numbers,  degenerates  in  point 
of  talent" — which  shows  that  fraternity  jealousy,  like  the 
poor,  is  ever  with  us.^ 

The  Trustees  again  turned  to  Professor  Caldwell  on 
December  14,  1816,  and  again  elevated  him  to  the  Presi- 
dency. This  was  a  critical  time,  as  the  last  session  of  young 
]\Iorehead's  senior  year  opened  on  January  1,  1817;  but  it 
was  a  great  time  in  the  commonwealth,  for  she  had  in  her 
Senate  one  whose  statesmanlike  reports  on  plans  for  both 
internal  improvement  and  public  education,  laid  before  that 
body  on  the  9th  and  19th  respectively,  of  the  previous  month, 
were  soon  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  whole  country,  and 
even  be  known  abroad,  setting  up  new  and  high  standards 
in  both,  and  certain  to  affect  the  plans  for  the  University. 
This  statesman  and  philosopher,  one  of  the  most  striking 
and  cultivated  in  the  Union,  was  none  other  than  President 
Caldwell's  old  pupil  and  friend  and  ablest  supporter  among 
the  Trustees,  Senator  Archibald  Debow  Murphy.  His  pro- 
posals were  along  the  same  lines  as  those  which  De  Witt 
Clinton  was  pressing  in  New  York,  state  and  city,  but  were 
far  more  scholarly  and  comprehensive,  so  far  as  the  state 
was  concerned ;  and  these  reports  were  only  the  opening 
guns  of  his  campaign.  Not  less  important  than  these,  but 
due  to  the  initiative  of  citizens  of  Rutherford,  a  county  in 
the  southwestern  part  of  the  state,  was  his  constructive  re- 
port proposing  plans  for  a  revision  of  the  state  constitution 
of  1776,  which  increasing  settlement  in  the  central  and 
western  parts  of  the  state  made  imperative ;  while  still  an- 
other proposal  of  his  was  the  colonization  of  free  negroes, 

^  The  two  societies  have  come  respectively,  the  writer  is  informed  by  Pro- 
fessor Connor,  to  be  territorial  in  membership,  the  "Di"  representing  the  west 
and  the  "Phi"  the  east.  This  would  appear  to  the  writer  to  be  a  natural  out- 
growth of  political  division  of  early  decades. 


28  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

who  were  increasing  in  number  through  individual  emanci- 
pation, in  some  vacant  parts  of  the  great  west.  These  papers 
were  publicly  printed  and  aroused  the  entire  state;  but  at 
this  point  in  this  narrative  only  reference  to  his  cooperation 
with  President  Caldwell  in  planning  a  more  able  Faculty 
need  be  considered  and  his  consequent  influence  on  John 
Motley  Morehead,  in  the  closing  half  of  his  senior  year.^ 

The  faculty  was  seriously  crippled  by  the  resignation  of 
President  Chapman,  leaving  it,  technically,  a  University 
without  a  Professor.  President  Caldwell  was  of  course  a 
Professor,  also;  but  for  that  session,  January  to  June,  1817, 
his  faculty  consisted  of  Principal  Tutor  William  Hooper, 
A.M.,  destined  to  become  a  Professor  and  college  President, 
and  Tutor  William  D.  Moseley,  himself  a  senior  and  destined 
to  be  Governor  of  Florida,  and  one  other  during  that  ses- 
sion, Robert  R.  King,  but  he  was  unpopular  and  resigned; 
so  that  during  young  Morehead's  second  half  of  his  senior 
year,  he  was  under  President  Caldwell's  sole  instruction, 
as  were  the  other  ten  members  of  his  class.  The  President, 
in  1815,  had  a  salary  of  $1200,  when  Professor  Caldwell 
had  but  $1000,  and  the  Principal  Tutor  $500,  with  $300  and 
board  each  for  the  other  two  Tutors.  These  were  somewhat 
increased  under  President  Caldwell,  and  a  search  was  being 
made  for  new  professional  timber  in  which  they  had  their 
eyes  on  two  Yale  men,  Denison  Olmsted  for  the  new  chair 
of  Chemistry,  and  Elisha  Mitchell,  then  a  Yale  Tutor,  se- 
lections again  due  to  the  scholarly  Trustee,  Hon.  William 
Gaston.  The  former,  however,  was  to  have  a  year  of  further 
study,  and  the  latter  would  not  be  available  before  February, 
1818,  so  that  President  Caldwell  and  his  Tutors  constituted 
the  Faculty  the  entire  year  of  1817. 

Young  John  Motley  Morehead  gave  his  graduation 
oration  at  Commencement  in  June,  and  received  his  degree 
of  Bachelor  of  Arts ;  but  President  Caldwell  did  not  intend 
he  should  leave  the  institution  yet.  Principal  Tutor  Hooper, 
at  this  commencement,  was  promoted  to  full  Professor  of 
Ancient  Languages,  which  had  evidently  been  his  chief  field 

1  See  Hoyt's  The  Papers  of  Archibald  D.  Murphy,  Vol.  II,  pp.  33,  49,  56, 
et  seq.;  also  Memoir  in  Vol.  I,  by  Hon.  WiUiam  A.   Graham,  LL.D. 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  29 

as  Tutor,  and  the  office  of  Principal  Tutor  was  adolished.^ 
Tutor  Moseley,  A.B.  (1817),  was  retained  for  the  next 
session  and  two  additional  Tutors  were  appointed  by  the 
President,  namely,  John  Motley  Morehead,  A.B.  (also  1817) 
and  Priestly  H.  Magnum,  A.B.,  who,  with  his  brother,  Willie 
(pronounced  Wylie),  P.  Mangum,  A.B.,  had  graduated  in 
1815.-  Moseley,  as  Senior  Tutor,  considered  himself  a  part 
of  the  Faculty  proper.  Tutors  Morehead  and  Mangum  may 
have  had  work  with  every  class,  in  which  case,  John  Motley 
Morehead  would  have  taught  James  K.  Polk,  a  future  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States ;  William  Mercer  Green,  a  future 
Bishop  of  Mississippi,  and  Chancellor  of  the  University  of 
the  South ;  Robert  Hall  Morrison,  a  future  President  of 
Davidson  College ;  and  eleven  other  members  of  that  notable 
class;  but  he  did  have  members  of  the  classes  of  '19,  '20,  '21 
and  '22  and  preparatory  students;  and  among  his  Juniors 
was  his  own  brother,  James  Turner  Morehead,  whom  he 
had  taught  with  other  brothers  and  sisters  in  his  own  home. 
His  duties  as  instructor,  therefore,  were  no  new  thing  in 
his  experience,  and  the  record  is  that  he  was  an  able  Tutor 
for  that  session  and  until  the  new  members  of  the  faculty 
were  installed  at  the  beginning  of  1818. 

There  is  little  doubt  but  that  he  had  long  since  determined 
to  make  the  Law  his  profession,  as  his  early  Latin  teacher, 
Thomas  Settle,  Jr.,  had  done ;  and  now  that  he  was  ready  to 
begin  its  study,  it  was  perfectly  natural  for  him  to  turn,  for 
instruction,  to  that  brilliant  Senator  Murphy  of  Hillsboro, 
the  county-seat  not  far  from  the  University,  whom  it  will 

1  Dr.  Battle,  in  his  otherwise  excellent  History  of  the  University,  makes 
some  very  confusing  statements  about  these  events,  but  the  facts  seem  to  be  as 
here  stated. 

2  The  Mangums  vi^ere  prepared  for  the  University  by  a  very  talented,  edu- 
cated free  negro,  named  John  Chavis,  who  prepared  a  considerable  number  of 
sons  of  wealthy  planters.  Another  free  negro  of  the  period.  Rev.  Henry  Evins, 
stopped  in  Fayetteville  to  do  missionary  work  among  the  colored  people;  but 
he  was  such  a  cultivated  and  powerful  preacher  that  the  white  people  came  to 
hear  him  so  persistently  that  he  finally  organized  them  into  a  Methodist  Church, 
the  colored  people  taking  the  gallery,  and  he  became  their  pastor.  As  he  became 
old  a  young  white  minister  became  co-pastor  and  finally  succeeded  him.  It  is 
said  that  inter-racial  antagonism  did  not  begin  until  the  abolition  movement 
began;  but  considerable  evidence  exists  that  the  real  cause  of  it  was  the  move- 
ment for  independence  under  Toussaint  L'Ouverture,  some  two  decades  before 
this  and  its  influence  as  an  object  lesson  upon  a  younger  generation  of  free 
negroes  and  their  associates.  An  uprising  in  Charleston  sometime  after  this  was 
directly  traced  to  this  influence;  and  it  would  be  further  influenced,  no  doubt, 
by  the  Bolivar  movement  in  South  America  at  this  period,  contemporary  with 
movements  to  check  further  emancipation  or  qualify  it  by  causing  them  to  be 
transported. 


30  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

be  well  to  note  more  clearly  at  this  point.  The  Senator 
was  probably  about  forty-one  years  old,  born  about  1777  in 
Caswell,  the  county  just  east  of  young  Morehead's  home, 
and  son  of  Colonel  Archibald  Murphy,  whose  plantation  in 
the  Dan  valley  was  about  seven  miles  from  Milton  near  the 
Virginia  border.  He  also  was  a  product  of  Dr.  David  Cald- 
well's school,  in  which  he  remained  until  1796,  when  the  new 
University  of  North  Carolina  was  started,  and  graduated 
after  three  years  in  1799  with  such  distinction  that  he  was 
made  Tutor  for  one  year  and  then  Professor  of  Ancient 
Languages,  a  chair  which  he  held  for  two  years,  during 
which  incumbency  he  so  perfected  himself  as  a  scholar  of  the 
highest  character  that  he  became  distinguished  throughout 
the  State.  He  had  begun  legal  study  also  under  the  direc- 
tion of  William  Dufifey,  Esq.,  of  Hillsboro,  and,  resigning, 
in  1801,  to  devote  himself  wholly  to  it,  he  was  admitted  to  the 
bar  by  mere  interview  on  the  basis  of  his  general  ability. 
Notwithstanding  he  was  to  cross  legal  rapiers  with  such  men 
as  Henderson,  Cameron,  Norwood,  Nash,  Seawell,  Yancey, 
Ruffin,  Badger,  Hawks  and  Mangum,  he  won  a  place  in  the 
front  rank  at  this  notable  bar  very  soon.  By  1804  he  was 
taking  such  careful  notes  that  he  became  Supreme  Court 
reporter  and  was  at  this  very  time  unconsciously  preparing 
for  the  three  volumes  of  reports  yet  to  be  issued.*  His  par- 
ticular delight  was  in  equity  practice,  which  he  often  said 
was  the  application  of  moral  philosophy  to  the  affairs  of 
men.  In  this  field  he  had  no  equal  in  the  entire  State.  In 
1812  he  was  chosen  State  Senator  from  Orange  County  and 
for  the  next  half-dozen  years  he  was  easily  the  leader  in 
North  Carolina  government;  and  his  broad  and  profound 
conceptions  of  public  affairs  caused  him  to  introduce  a  new 
era  in  the  State.  Without  doubt  no  man  has  greater  claim 
to  the  title  "Father  of  Public  Improvement  in  North  Caro- 

1  Mr.  Murphy  was  clerk  of  the  old  "Conference"  Supreme  Court,  and  on 
May  26,  1819,  was  ordered  by  the  new  Court  to  deliver  the  records.  Minutes 
of  the  Supreme  Court,  Vol.  19,  of  this  date.  The  first  North  Carolina  Re- 
ports was  Haywood's  of  1799,  chronologically  in  date  of  publication;  the  second, 
Taylor's,  in  1802;  the  third,  Cameron  &  Norwood,  in  1805;  the  fourth,  Hav- 
wood,  in  1806;  then  came  Editor  Gales',  The  Carolina  Law  Repository,  legal 
miscellany,  two  volumes,  in  1814  and  1816;  next  came  Taylor's  Rep'orts  of 
•  iLo^"*^  ^"'T^'^y's  were  issued— Vol.  3,  in  1821,  Vol.  1,  in  1822,  and  Vol.  2 
m  1826 — a  somewhat  confusing  arrangement  if  one  is  not  informed,  as  they 
are  not  so  numbered. 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  31 

lina."  Governor  Graham,  a  follower  of  his  in  later  years, 
says :  "No  man  has  ever  brought  into  our  Legislative  halls 
a  more  ardent  spirit  of  patriotism,  a  more  thorough  survey 
and  comprehension  of  her  situation  and  wants,  or  proposed 
bolder  or  more  intelligent  measures  for  her  relief."^  His 
reports,  which  as  chairman  of  a  legislative  committee  or  of 
the  Board  of  Internal  Improvement,  appeared,  one  or  more 
every  year  from  1815  for  the  next  eight  years,  covered,  in 
masterly  manner,  such  various  subjects  as  water  and  road 
transportation,  creation  of  trade  centers  within  the  State, 
a  system  of  public  education  covering  everything  from  pri- 
mary schools  and  those  for  defectives,  up  to  and  including 
the  University,  and  later  even  the  history  of  the  State. 
These  papers  are  worthy  of  the  best  statesmanship  of  any 
land,  and  they  became  a  great  source  of  public  instruction 
and  public  standards.  If  they  had  any  fault,  it  would  be 
that  they  were  too  comprehensive  for  their  times,  or  that  his 
was  the  work  of  the  sower  only,  and  that  the  executive 
reaper  was  yet  among  his  younger  followers. 

His  influence  upon  his  own  profession  was  scarcely  less. 
He  was  a  most  successful  teacher  of  the  law.  Thomas 
Ruffin,  afterward  a  famous  Chief  Justice  of  the  State,  was 
not  only  a  pupil,  but  a  life-long  intimate  friend,  and  the 
brilliant  Bartlett  Yancey  was  another.^  So,  soon  after  Feb- 
ruary, 1818,  John  Motley  Morehead  gave  up  his  tutorship  at 
the  University  and  began  his  legal  preparation  under  the 
great  lawyer  and  the  distinguished  public  leader.^  Whether 
Morehead  lived  at  Hillsboro  or  not,  is  unknown;  but  it  is 

1  Memoir  by  Hon.  William  A.  Graham,  LL.D.,  in  the  Murphy  Papers, 
Hoyt,  pp.  25,  26. 

'^  Among  Murphy's  later  students  were:  Governor  Jonathan  Worth,  Col. 
James  T.  Morehead,  Col.  John  A.  Gilmer,  William  J.  Bingham  (the  head-master 
of  the  celebrated  Bingham  School),  Judge  Henry  Y.  Webb  of  Alabama,  Charles 
Pendleton  Gordon  of  Georgia,  and  Justice  Jesse  Turner  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  Arkansas. 

3  It  is  interesting  to  note  at  this  point,  that  on  May  8,  this  year,  lots  were 
sold  in  the  new  town  of  Leaksville,  Rockingham  County — a  town  in  which 
young  Morehead  was  to  become  greatly  interested — to  the  sum  of  nearly 
$25,000.     Raleigh  Register,  current  date. 

Let  it  be  noted,  too,  that  on  August  24,  of  this  year,  the  corner-stone  of 
the  new  National  Capitol,  to  replace  the  one  burned  by  the  British,  was  laid, 
and  Trumbull  had  his  painting,  The  Declaration  of  Independence,  ready  for  ac- 
ceptance. Only  5  out  of  55  of  the  signers  were  still  alive,  and  yet  the  artist 
had  been  able,  through  himself  or  other  artists,  to  get  all  but  10  of  the  47  por- 
traits from  life.  "The  new  United  States  Bank  was  erecting  a  building  on  land, 
that,"  says  the  London  Times,  "cost  $1000  a  front  foot!  a  cost  more  than  that 
of  Carlton  House,  the  home  of  the  then  British  Prince  Regent,  or  more  than 
the  Parisian  palace  of  the  King  of  Persia!" 


32  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

probable  that  his  work  was  done  in  Senator  Murphy's 
office  and  fine  library,  and  that  he  did  much  of  the  clerical 
work,  as  was  the  custom  of  those  days.  Near  the  close  of 
that  year,  on  the  recommendation  of  Governor  John  Branch, 
there  was  a  reorganization  of  the  Judiciary  under  the  leader- 
ship of  William  Gaston,  that  was  to  affect  both  the  legal 
teacher  and  his  pupil.  The  Judiciary  Act  of  1777  had  cre- 
ated a  "Superior  Court,"  with  six  districts  or  circuits :  1.  Wil- 
mington ;  2,  Newbern ;  3,  Edenton ;  4,  Halifax ;  5,  Hillsboro ; 
6,  Salisbury — to  which  were  later  added:  7,  Morganton, 
and  8,  Fayetteville ;  and  it  served  the  purpose  of  a  Supreme 
Court  until  1799,  when  a  "Court  of  Conference,"  made  up 
of  these  Judges,  was  created  for  Supreme  Court  purposes, 
the  Superior  Court  becoming  purely  district  or  circuit  courts. 
The  "Court  of  Conference,"  in  1805,  was  given  the  name 
"Supreme  Court,"  so  that  these  Judges  were  both  "Superior" 
and  "Supreme"  Court  jurists — a  fact  rather  confusing  to  the 
uninitiated.  This,  in  1806,  caused  the  Judges  individually 
to  hold  "Superior  Courts"  in  each  county  twice  a  year,  and 
six  circuits  were  created.  It  was  only  in  1810  that  these 
Judges  sitting  as  a  Supreme  Court  were  authorized  to  select 
one  of  their  number  as  Chief  Justice,  the  first  one  being 
Judge  John  Louis  Taylor  of  Fayetteville,  who  had  been  on 
the  bench  since  1798,  and  a  quorum  was  any  two  of  the 
Judges. 

But  during  Senator  Murphy's  last  session,  after  young 
Morehead  had  been  with  him  nearly  a  year,  a  real  and  sepa- 
rate Supreme  Court  was  organized.  "The  bill  to  appoint 
three  Judges  to  hold  the  Supreme  Court,"  wrote  the 
Senator  to  his  friend.  Judge  Thomas  Ruffin,  also  of  Hills- 
boro, on  December  3rd,  "has  passed  its  second  reading  in 
both  Houses.  In  the  Senate  42  to  16  and  in  the  Commons  80 
to  44.  The  salary  $2500.  This  will  surprise  you  as  it  has 
everyone.  It  will  probably  be  read  the  third  time  and  passed 
in  each  house  tomorrow.  Tonight  the  enquiry  everywhere  is, 
who  are  to  be  the  Judges? — I  wish  you  were  here  to  help 
our  friend  Seawell.  I  fear  his  chance  is  not  good;  great 
eft'orts  are  making  for  Taylor,  and  don't  be  surprised  if  he 
be  elected.     L.  Henderson  will  be  one,  I  believe.     I  was 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  33 

waited  upon  this  evening  to  know  whether  my  name  should 
be  used.  I  intend  to  be  governed  by  circumstances.  If  I 
see  my  way  clear,  poorly  qualified  as  I  am,  I  shall  enter  the 
lists.  I  have  been  confined  to  my  room  constantly  and  know 
nothing  but  from  those  who  have  business  with  me.  James 
Mebane  tells  me  that  L.  Henderson,  Gaston  and  myself  will 
be  elected,  if  in  nomination.  He  is  well  acquainted  with  the 
members,  and  is  influential.  In  all  this  you  will  know  how 
easily  we  may  be  deceived.  One  day  more  may  give  a 
different  aspect  to  things,  and  probably  will.  The  salary  of 
the  Circuit  Judges  will  be  raised  to  $2000.  I  think  they  will 
probably  be  located.  We  have  a  liberal  and  intelligent  legis- 
lature. When  will  you  be  down?  No  nomination  is  yet 
made  to  fill  the  vacancy  on  the  Bench.  Nash,  Toomer, 
Paxton  and  Miller  will  all  be  in  nomination.  I  can't  even 
conjecture  who  will  be  elected."^ 

The  bill  passed  and  on  December  9th  Senator  Murphy 
was  nominated  for  the  Supreme  bench  in  the  Lower  House 
by  Mr.  Mebane.  The  western  ticket  was :  Henderson,  Sea- 
well  and  Murphy ;  but  the  eastern  people,  taking  Henderson, 
caused  his  election  and  that  of  Judge  John  Hall  on  Saturday, 
the  12th  of  December,  waiting  until  Monday,  the  14th,  to 
elect  the  old  Chief  Justice,  John  Louis  Taylor.^  On  the 
following  day  a  joint  committee  was  chosen  to  select  Judges 
of  the  Superior  Court,  and  on  the  17th  the  resignations  of 
the  Judges  just  elected  to  the  Supreme  bench  were  received. 
One  of  the  Judges,  Lowrie,  had  died  some  time  before  and 
the  Governor  and  Council  had  found  great  difficulty  in  se- 
curing a  successor,  who  was  fit  for  it,  the  salaries  were  so 
small  and  the  circuit  hardships  so  great.  On  the  18th 
Judges  John  Paxton,  John  D.  Toomer  and  Frederick  Nash 
were  chosen  to  fill  the  vacancies ;  but  on  the  23rd  of  Decem- 
ber Judge  Thomas  Ruffin's  resignation  was  received  and  it 
became  necessary  to  elect  his  successor.     Ruffin  was  proba- 


1  The  Papers  of  Thomas  Ruffin,  Hamilton,  Vol.  I,  p.  211.  Judge  Henry 
Seawell  was  a  Raleigh  jurist  of  about  forty-sLx;  Henderson,  of  Granville,  a 
man  of  about  the  same  age,  later  became  Chief  Justice;  Congressman  William 
Gaston,  of  Newbern,  about  forty,  had  a  greater  national  reputation  than  any 
of  the  rest. 

2  The  Papers  of  Archibald  D.  Murphy,  Hoyt,  Vol.  I,  pp.   122-3. 


34  JOHN  MOTLEY  I^IOREHEAD 

bly  the  ablest  Judge  in  the  State  and,  no  doubt,  had  some 
hopes  of  a  place  on  the  highest  tribunal  of  the  State  him- 
self. Under  the  circumstances  his  logical  successor,  both 
from  the  point  of  ability  and  location,  was  Senator  Murphy, 
and  his  choice  was  effected  on  Christmas  eve,  whereupon  he 
became  Judge  Murphy  of  the  Superior  Court  of  North 
Carolina.^ 

Soon  after  holidays,  the  Superior  Court  Judges,  ex- 
cepting Judge  Seawell,  met  and  arranged  their  circuits,  and 
early  in  February  announced  the  result,  as  follows : 
1.  Edenton  Circuit,  Judge  Daniel;  2.  Newbern,  Judge  Nash; 
3.  Raleigh,  Judge  Seawell ;  4.  \Vilmington,  Judge  Murphy ; 
5.  Hillsboro,  Judge  Toomer ;  and  6.  Morganton,  Judge  Pax- 
ton.  The  peculiar  law  that  compelled  continual  change  of 
Judges  from  one  circuit  to  another  and  the  varying  hardships 
and  inconveniences  a  given  Judge  would  find  in  some  of  them 
gave  occasion  for  heart-burnings,  so  that  the  Governor  had 
to  come  in,  in  one  case,  and  decided,  about  the  middle  of 
February,  to  send  Judge  Daniel  to  Raleigh  and  Judge  Sea- 
well to  Edenton,  away  from  home.  It  had  a  political  bearing 
and  Judge  Seawell  resigned  and  soon  became  Attorney  Gen- 
eral. That  young  Morehead  followed  Judge  Murphy  on  his 
circuit  is  not  probable ;  and  how  long  he  continued  his  inti- 
mate relations  with  his  legal  instructor  into  1819  is  unknown, 
because  there  seems  to  be  no  record  of  his  admission.-  It 
was  probably  late  in  the  year,  after  his  preceptor,  as  former 
clerk  of  the  Supreme  Court,  had  been  directed,  on  May  26th, 
to  deliver  the  records ;  after  June  12th,  when  Judge  Murphy 
was  appointed  Reporter  for  the  Supreme  Court  and  to  pub- 
lish the  first  three  volumes,  now  known  as  Murphy's  Re- 
ports ;  and  probably  after  June  21st,  when,  by  authority  of 
"letters  missive"  from  the  Governor,  he  was  appointed  to  sit 
on  the  Supreme  bench,  as  a  Judge  of  that  Court  in  the 
temporary  incapacity  of  any  of  its  members.  Judge  Murphy 
was,  therefore,  a  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  on  June  22 


^  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  no  commission  or  record  of  one  to  Judge  Murphy, 
as  a  Superior  Court  Judge  can  be  found. 

"The  records  of  Guilford  County  Superior  Court  were  nearly  all  destroyed 
by  fire  m  1870. 


I 


THREE  GREAT  TEACHERS  35 

and  23,  1819,  on  December  13th,  14th,  15th  and  17th  of 
the  same  year,  and  also  in  1820,  the  first  and  only  Judge  of 
this  period  to  be  so  honored,  and  could  claim  the  titles  of 
both  "Justice  and  Judge. "^  It  was  under  such  auspices 
that  young  John  Motley  Morehead,  now  twenty-three  years 
old,  closed  his  long  period  of  preparation  for  life  and  the 
practice  of  the  Law. 


^  Supreme  Court  Minutes  of  these  dates. 

The  room  in  "Old  South"  Hall  occupied  by  Mr.  Morehead  and  others  after 
him,  so  that  it  is  still  known  as  "The  Morehead  Room,"  is  on  the  southwest 
corner  of  the  second  floor.  So  late  as  1891  the  initials  of  the  original  occupant, 
"J.  M.  M.,"  carved  by  him  on  the  window  sill,  were  plainly  read. 


Ill 

Love  as  Well  as  Law 

AND 
"QUIESCERE  NON  PoSSUM" 

1819 

That  a  young  lawyer  should  settle  in  the  county-seat  of 
his  home  county  is  perfectly  natural,  and  especially  if  he 
should  have  taken  his  preliminary  Latin  under  a  young  law- 
yer there,  who  was  doing  the  same  thing  as  young  Lawyer 
Morehead  had.  The  county  was  an  old  one,  carved  out  of 
still  older  Guilford,  in  1785,  and  both  county-seat  and 
county  named  after  that  friend  of  America  among  English- 
men, Charles  Watson  Wentworth,  Marquis  of  Rockingham, 
the  family  name  going  to  the  former  and  the  title  name  to 
the  latter.  North  Carolina  did  not  forget  the  Prime  Min- 
ister who  had  repealed  the  Stamp  Act  and  stood  for  their 
liberties,  and  his  death,  while  again  Prime  Minister,  only 
three  years  before  the  organization  of  the  county,  was  fresh 
in  their  minds.  Of  course,  this  had  been  done  before  young 
Lawyer  Morehead  was  born  in  that  Virginia  county  named 
after  a  man  of  like  character,  William  Pitt,  but  both  names 
showed  the  keen  patriotism  of  these  two  counties  of  the 
"Land  of  Eden,"  lying  side  by  side  in  the  rich  valley  drained 
by  the  Roanoke. 

In  Wentworth  was  his  old  Latin  tutor,  now  just  elected  to 
the  Sixteenth  Congress,  as  successor  to  Bartlett  Yancey,  and 
leaving  a  lot  business  to  his  young  Latin  protege.  Congress- 
man Settle  had  been  in  that  able  Legislature,  led  by  Gaston 
and  Murphy,  while  Morehead  was  in  the  University.  He 
was  only  five  years  older  than  his  old  Latin  pupil,  and  was  an 
intimate  friend,  consequently  an  interesting  example  of  the 
lawyer  in  public  life.     Mrs.  Settle  was  the  sister  of  a  Cas- 

36 


u 

o 
i- 
z 
a 


< 

Pi 


< 

o 

< 

U 

X 

a: 
o 

iz; 


LOVE,  LAW  AND  MOTTO  37 

well  County  boy  of  fifteen,  in  Bingham  School,  Calvin 
Graves,  who  was  soon  to  study  law  under  her  husband  and 
was  destined  to  become  an  important  factor  in  young  More- 
head's  life.  Mrs.  Settle  was  to  have  a  son-in-law,  in  the 
same  county,  now  a  babe  of  but  six  years,  bearing  the  name 
David  Settle  Reid,  and  destined  to  become  a  Governor. 
So  Lawyer  Morehead  began  his  legal  life  in  Wentworth, 
and  made  his  home  with  the  younger  Robert  Galloway,  "with 
whom  he  lived  during  his  residence  here  on  terms  of  a  per- 
fect union  of  hearts," — to  use  the  words  of  Hon.  John  Kerr 
years  later.^  He  was  but  a  few  miles  from  his  old  home, 
northward  of  the  newly-projected  town  of  Leaksville,  and 
his  brother,  James  Turner,  graduated  this  year  from  the 
University  and  studied  law  under  Chief  Justice  Taylor  and 
Judge  Murphy .- 

The  two  brothers  saw  much  of  one  another  as  the  years 
proceeded  and  their  horses  travelled  much  down  into  Guil- 
ford County  to  the  region  of  David  Caldwell's  school,  near 
the  present  Guilford  Battle  Ground  National  Park,  where 
these  two  old  students  of  that  school  came  to  know,  at 
different  periods,  two  young  damsels  at  the  small  village, 
there,  of  Martinsville,  the  seat  of  Justice  of  that  county ;  and, 
as  it  proved  in  the  case  of  the  two  young  attorneys,  the 
realm  of  another  blindfolded  deity,  Cupid,  who,  like  the 
fates,  were  to  determine  this  region  as  their  home  in  the  near 
future.^ 

Guilford,  unlike  Rockingham,  was  a  colonial  county. 
Its  first  inhabitants  had  settled  there  when  it  was  still  a 
part  of  Edgecombe  and  Bladen  Counties,  in  1749;  and 
they  were  attracted  by  many  things,  fine  forests,  superb 
water  power,  and  an  excellent  diversified  soil.  Into  the 
central  part  that  forms  the  present  Guilford  County,  the 
Scotch  and  Scotch-Irish  came  down  the  Piedmont  from 
Pennsylvania,  Maryland  and  Virginia,  and  the  Lindsay  girls 
were  in  this  part,  near  Martinsville  or  Guilford  Court  House, 


1  Oration  of  Hon.  John  Kerr  on  John  Motley  Morehead,  1866. 

'^Murphy  Papers,  Hoyt,  Vol.  I,  p.  25,  and  Morehead  Family  of  North 
Carolina  and  Virginia,  John  Motley  Morehead  III,  p.  52. 

'  It  should  be  noted  that  the  younger  brother's  visits  and  interest  were 
some  years  later  than  those  of  John  Motley. 


38  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

as  it  was  quite  as  frequently  called.  The  settlers  engaged 
in  wheat  raising  and  fruit  culture,  particularly,  as  did  also  the 
Germans  from  the  Palatinate  who  settled  the  eastern  part. 
The  tobacco  lands  of  West  Guilford  attracted  the  English 
Quakers  as  well  as  a  band  of  Welsh ;  and  others  settled  in 
the  cotton  country  of  South  Guilford.  Presbyterians  from 
Nottingham,  Pennsylvania,  and  South  Carolina  settled  on  the 
Buffalo  and  Reedy  creeks,  and  were  "Old  School"  in  belief, 
while  followers  of  Whitefield,  the  "New  School,"  settled  on 
the  Alamance — causing  the  two  churches  over  which  David 
Caldwell  presided  so  long.  By  1766,  Governor  Tryon  was 
able  to  say  of  this  region:  'T  am  of  the  opinion  that  this 
province  is  settling  faster  than  any  on  the  continent.  .  .  . 
These  inhabitants  are  a  people  differing  in  health  and  com- 
plexion from  the  natives  in  the  maritime  parts  of  the 
province,  as  much  as  a  sturdy  Briton  differs  from  a  puny 
Spaniard."^  He  even  thought  tht,  region  as  "perhaps  the 
best  lands  on  this  continent."  These  three  elements  make 
Guilford  famous  for  its  impression  upon  North  Carolina. 
Governor  Tryon  was  to  find  it  out  to  his  and  their  sorrow, 
in  April,  1771,  when,  led  by  Guilford  county  men,  calling 
themselves  "Regulators,"  they  refused  to  pay  illegal  taxes, 
and  brought  about  the  Battle  of  Alamance,  which  has 
been  called  the  "first  battle  of  the  Revolution ;"  a  failure, 
too,  it  was,  just  as  "first  battles"  sometimes  are. 

Just  ten  years  later  the  county  was  to  be  the  scene  of 
what  has  been  called  "the  last  battle  of  the  Revolution,"  be- 
cause it  made  that  of  Yorktown  possible.  For  with  the  fall 
of  Charleston  in  the  spring  of  1780,  and  the  re-invigoration 
of  the  army  by  the  new  bank  in  Philadelphia,  Washington 
was  able  to  send  General  Greene  to  Charlotte  later  in  the 
year,  and  in  January,  1781,  the  latter's  lieutenant.  General 
Morgan,  won  the  great  victory  at  Cowpens,  near  the  South 
Carolina  line,  and  Cornwallis  started  for  Greene's  army. 
The  winter  and  spring  months  were  an  exhausting  game  of 


1  Col.  Records,  Vol.  7,  p.  248.  The  unpretentious  little  volume  called  The 
History  of  Guilford  County,  North  Carolina,  by  Sallie  W.  Stockard,  A.M.,  1902, 
is  probably  the  most  useful  single  volume  on  this  county,  a  volume  made  pos- 
sible largely  through  the  interest  of  Mr.  Victor  Clay  McAdoo,  of  Greens- 
boro, N.  C. 


LOVE,  LAW  AND  MOTTO  39 

chess  on  a  gigantic  board,  but  by  March  14th,  the  American 
general  was  prepared  to  give  battle  near  Guilford  Court 
House,  and  on  the  15th,  that  celebrated  action  resulted  in  a 
loss  of  one-fourth  of  the  British  forces,  which  so  depleted 
them,  that  although  the  Americans  had  retired,  Cornwallis' 
broken  army  had  to  hasten  eastward  for  protection.  Corn- 
wallis called  it  a  "victory,"  whereupon  his  London  superior 
exclaimed :  "Another  such  victory  would  destroy  the  British 
Army!"  And  Yorktown  followed  a  few  months  later,  and 
Guilford  Battle  Ground  is  now  a  beautiful  national  park.^ 

There  had  lived  at  this  battle  ground  since  1772,  Alex- 
ander Martin,  a  Princeton  graduate,  and  the  village  at  Guil- 
ford Court  House  took  his  name,  Martinsville.  He  had  been 
in  public  life  since  1774  and  was  now  Speaker  of  the  State 
Senate,  and  upon  the  capture  of  Governor  Burke,  he  became 
Governor,  the  first  of  six  successive  terms.  But,  in  1809, 
just  before  young  Morehead  had  entered  the  Caldwell 
school,  the  county  removed  the  seat  of  Justice  to  the  exact 
center  and  named  the  new  town  in  honor  of  the  great  Ameri- 
can general,  "Greensborough,"  which,  in  later  days  has  been 
economized  to  Greensboro  ;  and  in  1819-20,  young  Morehead 
had  cases  here  in  the  sessions  of  the  Superior  Court,  while 
in  1821  the  new  town  acquired  a  newspaper.  The  Greens- 
borough  Patriot.  One  interesting  feature  of  Greensboro 
was  the  fact  that  it  was  between  the  slave-holding  eastern 
part  of  the  county  and  the  Quaker  western  part,  where  the 
consciousness  of  the  sin  of  slavery  was  increased  by  the 


1  This  enterprise  was  a  private  one,  long  before  the  United  States  took  it 
over,  and  John  Motley  Morehead's  brother,  James  Turner's  son,  Major  Joseph 
Motley  Morehead,  devoted  so  much  of  his  life  to  it  that  a  statue  of  him  has 
been  erected  on  the  grounds.  Scarcely  less  devoted  was  his  wife,  Mrs.  May 
Christian  (Jones)  Morehead,  a  Virginian  descendant  of  a  founder  of  Baltimore, 
still  resident  of  Greensboro,  N.  C.  The  following  poem  by  him,  on  one  of  the 
monuments,  represents  the  fine  spirit  of  those  who  made  this  park  possible: 

"Clio 

"The  Muse   of  History 

"As   sinking    silently    to    night 
Noon    fades    insensibly. 
So    Truth's    fair    phase    assumes    the    haze 
And  hush  of  history. 

"But  lesser  lights  relieve  the  dark. 
Dumb   dreariness  of   night 
As  o'er  the  past  historians  cast 
At  least  a  stellar  light." 


40  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

oncoming  spirit  of  the  Revolution  and  independence.  In 
1774,  the  Quakers,  already  the  Quaker  center  of  the  State, 
began  freeing  their  slaves,  and  the  success  of  Toussaint 
L'Ouverture  in  freeing  Hayti,  led  them  to  charter  vessels  to 
take  the  new  freedmen  there.  Slaves  were  even  bought  in 
order  to  free  them;  and  the  number  of  free  negroes  that 
voted   were    not   inconsiderable    for   a   dozen   years   after 

this. 

As  has  been  said,  however,  the  primary  interest  in  the 
early  visits  of  the  Morehead  brothers  to  the  now  ten-year-old 
county-seat,  Greensboro,  was  in  the  environs  in  the  home  of 
the  Lindsays,  who  lived  at  Martinsville  and  near  Caldwell 
School.  Of  this  family,  one  of  the  boys  of  the  house- 
hold, Robert  Goodloe  Lindsay,  wrote,  in  later  years:  "Our 
great-great-grandfather  came  to  this  country  from  that  par- 
tion  of  Ireland  known  as  Scotch-Irish.  The  Lindsay  blood 
is  decidedly  more  Scotch  than  Irish.  The  Lindsays  of 
Scotch-Ireland  were  descendants  of  David  Lindsay,  the  head 
of  the  Scotch  clan  of  feudal  lords  in  Scotland  before  the  fall 
of  King  James  and  Bruce,  and  portions  of  the  family  took 
refuge  in  Ireland.  Afterwards  some  of  them  emigrated  to 
America,  and,  with  other  Scotch-Irish  colonists,  settled  in 
the  lower  part  of  Pennsylvania  and  Maryland ;  then  a  num- 
ber sought  new  homes  farther  South.  The  greater  portion 
of  that  number  that  came  to  North  Carolina  settled  in  Meck- 
lenburg county,  near  and  around  Charlotte.  Our  grand- 
father pitched  his  camp  in  Guilford,  in  Deep  River,  about 
twelve  miles  west  of  Greensboro  as  it  now  stands.  He 
never  left  the  place  he  first  settled  upon,  but  raised  his  large 
family  there,  consisting  of  six  boys  and  two  girls:  John 
settled  in  Davidson  county,  and  has  a  large  family  of  descen- 
dants; Samuel  located  in  the  south  part  of  Guilford; 
William,  near  the  old  homestead ;  Andrew  kept  to  the  old 
homestead  of  our  grandfather;  David  went  to  Jamestown; 
and  my  father,  Robert  Lindsay,  took  up  his  home  at  Martins- 
ville, then  the  county-seat  of  Guilford  county  after  the 
county  was  divided.  He  still  continued  to  live  at  Martins- 
ville, but  did  mercantile  business  at  the  new  Court  House, 
Greensboro.     My  mother  [Letitia  (Harper)  Lindsay]  con- 


LOVE,  LAW  AND  MOTTO  41 

tinued  to  live  at  Martinsville  until  she  married  a  Mr. 
[Henry]  Humphries."^ 

Robert  Lindsay,  Jr.,  was  a  member  of  the  first  House  of 
Commons  under  the  commonwealth  in  North  Carolina  and 
had  died  just  the  year  before  young  Morehead  had  settled 
in  practice  in  Wentworth.  Mrs.  Lindsay  was  the  daughter 
of  Colonel  Jeduthun  Harper,  of  the  Revolution,  and  was 
about  ten  years  the  junior  of  her  husband.  Her  family,  in 
1819,  consisted  of  Ann  Eliza,  the  eldest,  aged  fifteen — the 
one  in  whom  John  Motley  Morehead  was  interested ;  a  son  of 
thirteen,  another  of  eleven,  a  daughter  somewhat  younger, 
a  son  of  nine,  a  daughter  of  six,  Mary  Teas  Lindsay,  in 
whom  some  years  later  Attorney  Morehead's  brother,  James 
Turner,  was  to  became  interested ;  and  finally  a  baby  son, 
three  years  old,  who,  years  later,  wrote  the  above  account 
of  the  family.  John  Motley  Morehead,  of  Wentworth,  was 
only  an  occasional  visitor,  as  he  was  rapidly  becoming  a  very 
busy  young  lawyer  in  various  parts  of  his  circuit,  that  of 
Hillsboro,  and  was  only  looking  forward  to  miarriage,  but 
not  immediately. 

He  had  begun  buying  his  law-books,  and,  following  the 
usual  custom,  he  determined  upon  a  suitable  book-plate, 
with  a  motto,  which  he  pasted  on  the  inside  of  the  front  cover 
of  each.2  Such  insignia,  like  a  graduating  theme,  often  are 
selected  with  wonderful  intuition ;  and  really  do  represent 
the  life's  chief  characteristic  in  most  cases,  probably.  A 
student  of  the  Caldwells  and  Judge  Murphy  would  be  ex- 
pected to  have  lofty  ideals  of  life  and  the  practice  of  the  law, 
with  a  high  regard  for  public  duty.  Judge  Murphy  at  this 
very  time,  by  his  actual  career,  was  as  fine  an  embodiment 
of  private  and  public  life  as  was  Cicero  in  the  best  days  of 
the  Roman  Republic.     Something  over  two  years  before,  as 

1  The  Morehead  Family  of  North  Carolina  and  Virginia,  by  John  Motley 
Morehead  III,  of  New  York,  p.  95. 

"  Lindsay  Patterson,  Esq.,  Winston-Salem,  N.  C,  has  his  Reports  coming 
down  to  about  1854.  Some  of  the  rest  of  his  library  is  in  the  Public  Library, 
Greensboro,  N.  C,  among  these  books  being  a  copy  of  Jefferson's  Manual  of 
Parliamentary  Practice  for  the  Use  of  the  Senate  of  the  U.  S.,  1801,  on  the 
fly-leaf  of  which  it  is  shown  to  have  been  presented  by  Jefferson  to  D.  W.  Stone 
and  by  him  to  Mr.  Morehead  on  July  5,  1841.  Another,  Buller's  Trials  at  Nisi 
Prius,  was  first  owned  by  Wm.  Fleming  and  then  by  Patrick  Henry,  while 
another  containing  Henry's  book-plate  is  Coleman's  translation  of  The  Comedies 
of   Terence,   illustrated. 


42  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

chairman  of  a  House  Committee  on  Inland  Navigation, 
namely,  in  December,  1816,  which  resulted  in  surveys  being 
ordered,  in  which  he  and  President  Caldwell  took  part, 
especially  the  proposal  to  connect  the  river  transportation 
of  the  Cape  Fear  river,  at  head  of  navigation,  with  the 
Yadkin  in  the  upper  country,  he  produced  his  first  able  re- 
port. It  resulted  later,  too,  in  his  becoming  President  of  the 
Yadkin  Navigation  Company.  In  this  report  he  had  said : 
"The  true  foundation  of  national  prosperity  and  of  national 
glory  must  be  laid  in  a  liberal  system  of  Internal  Improve- 
ments, and  of  Public  Education,"  and  intimated  these  were 
reserved  for  future  thought.  Following  close  upon  it  had 
been  his  report  on  Education  later  in  the  same  month,  in 
which  he  reviewed  the  excellent  private  schools  and  the 
University.  "But,"  said  he,  "this  general  system  must  in- 
clude a  gradation  of  schools,  regularly  supporting  each 
other,  from  the  one  in  which  the  first  rudiments  of  educa- 
tion are  taught,  to  that  in  which  the  highest  branches  of  the 
sciences  are  cultivated.  It  is  to  the  first  schools  in  the 
gradation"  that  he  wishes  to  draw  attention  and  make  pro- 
posals covering  every  element  in  the  population,  even  the 
deaf  and  dumb.  This  resulted  in  three  commissioners  as  a 
board  to  digest  a  system  of  Public  Instruction,  of  which  also 
he  was  chairman,  and  his  great  report  of  November  29,  1817, 
while  Morehead  was  yet  a  tutor,  covered :  1.  The  creation  of 
a  fund ;  2.  An  executive  board  ;  3.  Organization  of  schools ; 
4.  Courses ;  5.  Modes  of  instruction  ;  6.  Discipline ;  7.  Pro- 
vision for  poor  children ;  and  finally,  8.  A  Deaf  and  Dumb 
School.  Still  later  in  the  same  month,  as  has  been  noted 
elsewhere,  as  chairman  of  another  committee,  he  showed 
how  necessary  it  was  that  a  new  constitutional  convention 
be  called  to  equalize  representation,  which  the  great  influx 
of  population  in  the  west  had  made  viciously  unequal.  This 
proposal  was  defeated  by  the  eastern  members  in  the  Sen- 
ate, and  this  action  touched  probably  the  most  sensitive  nerve 
in  the  commonwealth,  and  it  was  felt  from  end  to  end  of  the 
body  politic.  About  the  same  time  he  touched  upon  another 
sensitive  public  nerve,  but  with  an  alleviating  hand  this  time, 
namely,  with  a  proposal  that  might  have  made  a  negro  State 


Archibald   DeBow    Murpiiev 
From  an   engraving  by  John   Sartain   in 
the  Murphey  Papers 


LOVE,  LAW  AND  MOTTO  43 

on  the  Pacific  Coast ;  and  his  resolution  was  adopted,  but  as 
it  was  merely  a  national  recommendation  it  came  to  noth- 
ing. It  showed,  however,  the  increasing  sense  of  danger 
in  the  growing  number  of  free  negro  voters. 

By  the  beginning  of  1818,  Chairman  Murphy  was  able 
to  report,  in  an  effort  to  create  a  fund,  that  what  had  been 
done  in  inland  navigation  had  increased  the  land  values  more 
than  ten  million  dollars.  "North  Carolina,"  says  The  Niks 
Register,  a  national  weekly  of  19th  July,  1817,  "seems 
roused  to  a  sense  of  her  many  natural  advantages.  .  .  . 
This  State  owes  more  to  Archibald  D.  Murphy,  Esq.,  than  to 
any,  perhaps,  of  her  many  enlightened  citizens.  His  name, 
through  his  reports  to  the  Legislature,  etc.,  is  familiar  to  our 
readers ;  but  he  has  many  associates  in  his  meritorious 
labors."  Already  the  several  navigation  companies  had 
made  such  improvements,  that  the  Register  announced  that 
tobacco  from  the  Dan  river,  or  upper  Roanoke  country,  had 
reached  Norfolk  in  large  amounts  for  the  first  time.  About 
the  same  time  this  statesman  as  chairman  of  a  finance  com- 
mittee, attempted  to  solve  the  currency  problems  of  the 
State — a  legacy  of  those  who  refused  to  re-charter  that  great 
balance-wheel  of  finance,  the  Bank  of  the  United  States : 
"About  twenty  years  ago,"  he  wrote  on  17th  Dec,  1817, 
"we  had  no  bank  in  this  state :  but  we  had  a  paper  currency 
issued  by  the  State,  supposed  to  amount  to  about  three  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars.  Every  man  whose  recollection  ex- 
tends so  far  back,  will  admit,  that  at  least  one-half,  of  our 
then  circulating  medium,  was  composed  of  paper  currency; 
and  this  fact  seems  to  prove  that  our  circulating  medium  at 
that  day  did  not  exceed  six  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
Until  within  the  last  six  years,  the  banks  of  Newbern  and 
Cape  Fear,  were  the  only  institutions  of  that  description  in 
the  state.  The  capital  of  both  amounted  to  about  four  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars,  and  the  notes  issued  by  them,  not  only 
composed  almost  entirely  our  circulating  medium,  but  they 
overflowed  into  other  states,  and  became  considerably  de- 
preciated. The  circulating  medium,  at  that  time  required 
for  the  state,  could  not  have  exceeded  one  million.  When 
the  State  Bank  was  established  six  years  ago,  with  a  capital 


44  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

of  one  million  six  hundred  thousand  dollars,  it  was  thought 
by  many  that  that  capital  was  larger  than  could  be  profitably 
employed  in  supplying  the  circulating  medium  employed  by 
the  state."  He  then  shows  that  this  State  Bank's  stock 
should  be  extended  for  relief  in  some  way  as  the  Newbern 
and  Cape  Fear  Banks  had,  with  extended  charters,  and  that 
a  Branch  Bank  of  the  United  States  Bank,  re-chartered  in 
1816,  was  also  nearly  ready  to  open.  Incidentally,  he 
shows  that  at  the  time  when  banks  west  and  south  of  New 
England  suspended  specie  payments,  notes  of  this  State  Bank 
of  North  Carolina,  in  a  great  degree,  became  a  continental 
currency,  and  left  the  state  dependent  on  the  Banks  of  New- 
bern and  Cape  Fear  [Wilmington]  ;  but  now  that  the 
National  Bank  was  re-chartered  and  furnishing  part  of  the 
currency,  the  outside  currency  is  returning  and  caution  must 
be  used.  His  report  on  this  subject  of  21st  November,  1818, 
was  no  less  statesman-like;  as  was  also  that  as  chairman 
pro  tern,  of  Commissioners,  whose  surveys  were  to  connect 
up  the  river  systems  of  the  state,  dated  28th  November,  1818. 

Judge  Murphy's  most  elaborate  treatment  was  issued  as  a 
publicist  and  for  information  of  the  Legislature  in  Nov., 
1819,  under  the  title  Memoir  on  the  Internal  Improvements, 
Contemplated  by  the  Legislature  of  North  Carolina,  and  on 
the  Resources  and  Finances  of  that  State.  It  covered  nearly 
a  hundred  pages,  and  was  reviewed  by  Jared  Sparks  in  The 
North  American  Review  in  January,  1821.  It  is  impossible 
to  speak  too  highly  of  this  remarkable  paper,  which  was 
being  read  and  reviewed  throughout  1820  and  '21.  It  is 
probably  the  first  statesman-like  and  adequate  analysis  of  the 
fundamental  problems  of  this  great  and  unique  common- 
wealth. It  is  probably  not  too  much  to  say  that  here  are  the 
architectural  plans  and  specifications  of  the  state  of  North 
Carolina,  so  far  as  they  could  be  foreseen  and  provided  for 
in  the  second  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century ;  and  the 
architect,  scientist  and  philosopher  was  Archibald  Debow 
Murphy  one  of  her  own  sons  and  a  product  of  her  own 
higher  education  under  the  two  Caldwells. 

To  the  general  reader  it  furnishes  probably  the  best  con- 
ception of  the   North  Carolina  structural   conditions   and 


LOVE,  LAW  AND  MOTTO  45 

world-wide  engineering  on  similar  lines,  of  that  day;  but, 
as  it  is  written  for  a  foreign  chief  engineer,  who  had  recently 
been  secured,  and  also  for  the  North  Carolina  influential 
public  in  order  to  secure  adoption  of  the  system  proposed, 
it  assumes  in  them  a  certain  knowledge  of  the  state  and  the 
times  which  will  not  be  possessed  by  such  a  reader.  In 
order,  however,  to  arrive  at  that  knowledge,  it  will  be  well 
to  note  some  of  the  chief  characteristics  of  what  he  does 
present : 

He  shows,  for  instance,  that,  for  a  State,  as  well  as  the 
individual.  Pope's  dictum — "Know  then  thyself" — was  the 
beginning  of  wisdom.  North  Carolinians  had  known  too 
much  about  her  daughter,  Tennessee,  and  the  Ohio  and 
Mississippi  valleys,  whither  she  had  sent  over  a  half-million 
of  her  population,  because  she  knew  not  her  own  great  re- 
sources. The  War  of  1812-15  had  brought  on  a  new  gen- 
eration and  made  Internal  Improvement  of  resources 
the  great  slogan  of  the  hour.  The  Legislatures  of  1815, 
and  those  since,  had  awakened  to  it,  but  not  enough.  Two 
of  the  greatest  needs  were  Transportation  and  home  Trade 
Centers ;  and  by  the  former  he  meant  only  water  trans- 
portation, with  short  good  roads  to  it,  while,  by  Trade  Cen- 
ters, he  meant  a  port  of  sufficient  dominance  to  be  a  Financial 
center.  As  it  was,  there  was  a  tendency  to  go  to  the  Roanoke 
and  two  Virginia  ports  or  the  South  Carolina  rivers  and 
Charleston,  with  one-third  of  her  production.  This  made 
out-side  financial,  as  well  as  trade  centers  and  destroyed  the 
unity  of  the  state,  and  raised  up  no  great  consuming  com- 
munities. Transportation,  trade,  manufactures,  finance  and 
banking  were  different  phases  of  the  one  unity ;  and  they 
were  inseparable.  He  cited  Pennsylvania  as  first  realizing 
it  and  acting  accordingly  with  marvelous  results.  New 
York's  great  canal  was  a  beginning  there,  and  Virginia  had 
already  established  a  fund.  And  what  is  more,  Pennsyl- 
vania had  so  profited  by  her  investment  that  in  her  returns 
from  it  she  had  been  enabled  almost  to  dispense  with  tax- 
ation. He  analyzes  the  unique  water-front  of  North  Caro- 
lina and  its  problems  of  engineering,  and  the  efforts  to  get 
a  great  engineer  for  whom  the  demand  was  greater  than  the 


46  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

supply,  and  the  amateur  efforts  of  home  talent  meanwhile. 
Surveys  and  maps  were  needed  and  settlement  of  boundaries. 
(Mr.  Hamilton  Fulton,  the  distinguished  young  British 
engineer,  for  whom  this  was,  in  part,  written,  had  been  se- 
cured in  July,  1819.)  The  river  systems  are  analyzed  in 
relation  to  a  proposed  port,  better,  if  possible,  than  Wilming- 
ton, which  had  great  disadvantages ;  and  a  canal  connection 
of  those  systems  is  a  prime  object.  He  points  out  the  granite 
falls  of  these  rivers  at  the  eastern  edge  of  the  Piedmont,  and 
their  obstruction  to  traffic,  in  a  great  northeast  and  south- 
westerly sweep  just  eastward  of  Raleigh,  as  the  chief  inland 
problem.  Allied  to  these  were  connecting  roads  and  drain- 
age of  swamp  lands. 

These  analyses  were  supported  and  enforced  by  excellent 
statistical  tables :  For  example,  net  payments  to  the  national 
government,  as  duties,  etc.,  varied  from  $16,918.49  in  1808, 
the  lowest,  to  $456,478.81  in  1813,  the  highest.  Exports  had 
ranged  from  $117,129,  in  1808,  the  lowest,  to  $1,328,271,  in 
1816,  the  highest.  For  1816,  as  an  example,  Wilmington  led, 
with  $1,061,112;  Newbern  followed  next,  with  $84,281; 
Edenton  next,  with  $71,484;  Plymouth  next,  with  $36,314; 
Washington  next,  with  $33,933 ;  Ocracoke  Inlet,  with  $28,- 
165 ;  and  finally  Camden,  with  but  $12,982.  North  Caro- 
lina foreign  trade  tonnage,  registered,  varied  from  10,167  in 
1793  to  26,472  in  1810.  Coasting  tonnage,  above  20  tons, 
varied  from  2764  in  1793  to  13,184  in  1816.  As  an  example 
of  chief  exports  abroad  from  Wilmington  in  1817:  cotton 
was  chief  with  438,529  lbs. ;  Indian  Corn  next  with  22,588 
bushels ;  turpentine,  tar,  pitch  and  rosin  next  with  about 
18,000  bbls.;  lard,  over  20,000  lbs.;  shingles,  over  14,000 
thousands ;  over  12,000  lbs.  of  hams  and  bacon ;  and  lesser 
exports,  the  total  value  of  which  was  $713,961.48.  Fay- 
etteville,  at  head  of  navigation  on  the  Cape  Fear,  handled  of 
domestic  produce  from  the  Pidemont,  $621,900  worth  of 
cotton  and  $400,000  worth  of  tobacco ;  $129,629  worth  of 
flour ;  $77,460  worth  of  flaxseed ;  $50,000  worth  of  miscel- 
lany like  bacon,  lard,  tallow,  furs,  etc. ;  a  total  of  $1,331,398. 

The  population  that  produced  this,  was,  in  1810: — 555,- 
500,  of  which   168,824   were   slaves ;   and   they  were  dis- 


LO\'E,  LAW  AND  MOTTO  47 

tributed  in  leading  counties  as  follows :  total  population : 
1.  Rowan,  in  the  central  west,  had  most,  21,543;  2.  Orange, 
near  it,  20,135;    3.  Wake,  where  Raleigh  is,  next,  17,086; 

4.  Lincoln,  western  also,  16,359;  5.  Halifax,  eastern  Roa- 
noke valley,  15,620;  6.  Granville,  another  Roanoke  county, 
15,576;  7.  Rutherford,  west  of  Lincoln,  13,202;  8.  North- 
ampton, another  Roanoke  county,  13,082 ;  9.  Chatham,  near 
Orange,  12,977;  10.  Craven,  the  Newbern  port  county,  12,- 
676 — to  name  only  ten  of  eighteen  counties  of  above  11,000. 
The  counties  which  led  in  number  of  slaves  were:  1.  Gran- 
ville, in  Roanoke  county,  with  7746;  2.  Northampton,  also 
on  Roanoke,  with  7258 — exceeding  the  whites  by  about  .1500 ; 
3.  Halifax,  also  on  Roanoke,  6624;  4.  New  Hanover,  the 
Wilmington  county,  6442 — exceeding  the  whites  by  over 
1400 ;  5.  Warren,  also  on  Roanoke,  6282 — exceeding  whites 
by  over  1500;  6.  Bertie  (accent  on  last  syllable),  also  on 
Roanoke,  6059 — exceeding  whites  by  nearly  1000 ;  7.  Wake, 
Raleigh  county,  5878 — scarcely  half  of  the  whites  ;  8.  Frank- 
lin next  to  Warren  and  practically  Roanoke  county,  5330 — 
nearly  500  above  the  whites ;  9.  Edgecombe,  adjoining  Hali- 
fax, 5107,  over  2000  less  than  the  whites ;  10.  Craven,  New- 
bern's  county,  5050,  over  200  less  likewise — to  name  but  ten 
of  sixteen  counties  having  above  3000  slaves.  The  counties 
greatest  in  white  population  were:  1.  Rowan  (also  first  in 
population,  but  being  thirteenth  in  slaves)  ;  2.  Orange 
(eleventh  in  slaves)  ;  3.  Lincoln  (below  sixteenth  in  slave 
rank)  ;    4.  Rutherford  (far  below  sixteenth  in  slave  rank)  ; 

5.  Wake  (seventh  in  slaves)  ;  6.  Mecklenburg  (sixteenth 
in  slaves)  ;  7.  Guilford  (with  9953  whites  and  only  1467 
slaves)  ;  8.  Stokes;  9,  Burke;  10.  Chatham  (fourteenth  in 
slave  rank) — naming  only  ten  of  eighteen  counties  with 
above  7800,  all  of  which,  possibly  excepting  Wake,  the  capi- 
tal seat,  being  Piedmont  or  mountain  counties,  while  seven 
out  of  the  first  ten  slave  counties  were  on  the  Roanoke  or 
next  to  them,  the  exception  being  the  Wilmington,  Newbern 
and  Raleigh  counties.  The  value  of  all  the  slaves  in  1815 
was  $40,667,314,  almost  as  much  as  the  land  which  was  for 
tax  purposes,  $53,521,513.  In  that  year  there  were  twelve 
counties  whose  land  valuations  were  above  one  million  dol- 


48  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

lars:  1.  Rowan  ($1,870,142);  2.  Halifax;  3.  Orange;  4. 
Edgecombe;  5.  Northampton;  6.  Wake;  7.  Bertie;  8. 
Mecklenburg;  9.  Lincoln;  10.  Granville ;  11.  Warren;  and 
12.  Guilford,  with  1,042,704.  Of  these  twelve,  half  are 
Roanoke  country,  four  are  central  western  and  two  western 
near  the  mountains,  or,  practically  half  Roanoke  and  half 
western,  a  fact  of  great  significance.  The  whole  number  of 
counties  at  this  time  was  sixty-two. 

The  1817  taxes,  by  counties,  with  fourteen  paying  each 
above  $2000:  1.  Orange,  with  Hillsboro ;  2.  Wake,  with 
Raleigh ;  3.  Granville ;  4.  Rowan,  with  Salisbury ;  5.  Cum- 
berland, with  Fayetteville ;  9.  Edgecombe,  with  Tarboro; 
7.  Caswell;  8.  Northampton;  9.  New  Hanover,  with  Wil- 
mington; 10.  Warren;  11.  Bertie;  12.  HaHfax;  U.Meck- 
lenburg, with  Charlotte;  and  14.  Lincoln.  Of  these,  eight 
were  in  Roanoke  country;  three  were  Western  and  Cum- 
berland and  Wake  were  partly  eastern  and  partly  western, 
with  one  being  the  port  county  of  Wilmington. 

The  State  owned  $500,000  in  bank  stock  and  $112,500  in 
stock  of  the  following  navigation  companies :  Roanoke,  Yad- 
kin, Cape  Fear,  Neuse,  Tar  River,  Catawba,  Lumber  River 
Canal,  Roanoke  and  Pamtico  [Pamlico]  and  Club  Foot  and 
Harlow  Creek.  The  Treasury  disbursements  in  1817  were 
$207,081.51.  By  his  analysis  of  revenue  and  expenditure, 
he  showed  that  there  would  be  an  annual  surplus  of  $35,000, 
which  in  1822,  would  leave  in  the  Treasury  $265,234.58. 

He  then  analyzes  the  statistics  to  show  the  state  can  have 
ample  funds  to  carry  out  this  improvement  system.  The 
Cherokee  lands  of  probably  "more  than  a  million  acres" 
and  the  required  loans  of  the  two  old  banks  are  added 
to  these  showing  that  the  state,  without  taxation,  had  at 
her  command  more  than  a  million  dollars.  He  then  treated 
in  detail  how  these  funds  should  be  managed  and  pro- 
posed a  Board  of  Public  Works.  To  these  he  added  a  plan 
of  feeder  roads  in  the  mountains ;  and  closed  with  an 
analysis  of  the  problems  of  the  formation  of  alluvial  lands 
on  the  coast,  with  historical  treatment  from  Herodotus  down 
to  Proney,  the  French  engineer,  and  Cuvier's  Theory  of  the 
Earth. 


LOVE,  LAW  AND  MOTTO 


49 


It  will  thus  be  seen  that  North  Carolina  had  great 
problems  and  that,  in  approaching  them,  she  had  a  great  and 
skillful  leader  in  taking  the  first  steps  in  their  solution,  as  a 
publicist  and  public  inspirer  and  teacher,  in  this  able  lawyer, 
jurist  and  statesman,  Archibald  Debow  Murphy,  law  pre- 
ceptor and  friend  of  young  Attorney  John  Motley  Morehead 
of  Wentworth,  in  the  county  of  Rockingham.  Is  it  any 
wonder  then,  that,  when  the  young  man  chose  a  book- 
plate and  pasted  its  impressions  on  the  inside  of  the  front 
cover,  it  should  contain  a  thought  from  Cicero's  De  Repub- 
lic a,  and  in  the  language  of  that  Roman  lawyer,  and  should 
read: 


No. 


John  M.  Morehead 

—  :  o  :  — 

Quiescere  non  Possum 


which  latter,  being  liberally  interpreted,  signifies  that  he  is 
not  able  to  live  uninterested  in  public  affairs?  As  he  had 
been  a  disciple  of  Murphy  in  law,  so  he  became  one  of  his 
followers  in  statesmanship,  destined  to  surpass  his  master 
in  vision  and  powers  belonging  to  another  generation  and  a 
new  time. 


IV 
Lost  Atlantis'  Legacy 

OF 

Problems  to  North  Carolina 

1821 

Attorney  John  M.  Morehead  had  been  in  practice  in 
Wentworth  about  two  years,  when  his  inability  to  be  unin- 
terested in  public  affairs — the  problems  of  state — and  his 
excellent  general  ability  became  so  evident,  that  Rocking- 
ham county,  in  the  summer  of  1821,  when  he  was  but 
twenty-five  years  old,  sent  him  to  the  lower  house  of  the 
Assembly,  then  called  the  House  of  Commons,  as  a  successor 
of  his  old  Latin  teacher,  Congressman  Settle.  And  he  went 
as  a  supporter  of  the  program  of  Judge  Murphy,  and  was 
familiar  with  his  great  report  on  the  problems  of  the  com- 
monwealth. He  brought  to  it  a  mind  quite  as  comprehensive 
as  that  of  his  preceptor-statesman,  and  even  more  so;  but 
with  that  comprehensiveness,  he  brought  not  less  of  theory, 
but  more  of  organizing  constructive  power  and  a  more  severe 
regard  for  great  realities.  A  suggestion  of  the  visionary 
might  characterize  Murphy,  and  his  career  had  failures  in  it ; 
but  Morehead's  life  was  not  characterized  by  failure  and, 
by  common  consent  of  all,  he  was  "a  man  of  great  vision." 
He  was  a  remarkably  well  rounded  man,  physically,  with 
his  powerful  frame  and  sandy,  Scotch  temperament,  genial 
but  serious,  magnetic  and  gentle ;  intellectually,  with  the 
finest  cultivation,  a  mind  open  to  all  sides  of  life,  master  of 
himself,  capable  of  holding  fine  ideals  in  the  proportions  of 
truth,  able  also  to  see  hfe  whole,  a  strong  writer  and  a  pow- 
erful speaker;  socially,  able  and  inclined  to  meet  pleb  or 
patrician  port  to  port  and  as  though  his  vision  of  manhood 
was  so  keen  that  he  minified  the  differences ;  and,  morally, 
holding  his  ideals  with  a  constant  aggressive  intuitive  pur- 
pose and  power  to  realize  them.     While  some  could  hold 

50 


LEGACY  OF  LOST  ATLANTIS  51 

ideals  in  a  speculative  way,  John  Motley  Morehead  held  them 
in  a  process  of  realization.  If  his  wagon  was  hitched  to  a 
star,  he  kept  the  wheels  to  a  well-paved  highway.  Vision 
and  action  were  undivorced,  and  he  so  lived  in  that  kind  of 
a  presence,  that  it  produced  the  impression  of  a  combined 
modesty,  boldness  and  wisdom,  that  makes  him  a  difficult 
character  to  picture.  Not  that  this  ripeness  was  complete 
in  this,  his  twenty-fifth  summer,  but  the  foundations  were 
all  there;  and  he  approached  the  problems  of  North  Caro- 
lina with  this  kind  of  character. 

And  those  problems  were  unique,  among  all  the  common- 
wealths of  the  union,  and  even  all  countries  of  the  world. 
No  land  in  the  world  had  just  such  a  combination  of 
problems ;  and  no  man  was  to  enter  upon  their  solution  with 
so  great  a  comprehension,  as  he  came  to  penetrate  into  them 
more  and  more  from  year  to  year. 

Let  us  see  just  what  they  really  were — and,  it  may  be 
added,  still  are!  And  they  are  wonderfully  interesting, 
going  back  to  what  some  have  called  "Lost  Atlantis." 

To  find  the  problems  of  North  Carolina,  let  us  go  to  the 
Island  of  Hayti,  and  go  to  the  top  of  Mt.  Tina.  Here  one 
stands  on  the  top  of  a  mountain  on  a  mountain,  for  the 
Island  of  Hayti  is  itself  the  top  of  a  submarine  mountain, 
as  are  all  the  West  Indies  up  to  the  Bermudas — mountains 
which  themselves  rise  from  a  submarine  continent;  so  that, 
from  the  top  of  Mt.  Tina,  down  its  sides  and  down  to  its 
base  in  the  bottom  of  the  ocean,  is  a  height  greater  than  Mt. 
Everest  by  nearly  two  miles — about  10,000  feet  greater,  to 
be  more  exact.  The  great  depths  about  this  submerged 
continent,  so  near  to  the  American  shore,  and  by  some  sup- 
posed to  be  the  lost  Atlantis,  gives  a  new  meaning  to  that 
more  than  seven-mile  depth  of  waters  that  stream  about  its 
sides  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  continually  acquiring  more 
head,  and  passing  out  along  the  front  of  Florida,  Georgia 
and  South  Carolina,  about  thirty  miles  out,  and  with  a 
velocity  of  about  three  miles  an  hour,  and  with  so  vast  a  bulk 
that  it  is  itself  a  feature  of  continental  proportions. 

As  it  reaches  the  front  of  North  Carolina  and  begins 
to  pass  out  of  the  gigantic  gateway  between  it  and  the  Ber- 


52  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

mudas,  it  both  spreads  out  and  meets  the  cold  current  down 
the  coast;  and  the  junction  of  these  cold  and  heated  bodies 
helps  to  make  the  storms  of  these  waters  most  dangerous, 
while  in  earlier  days,  before  the  Stream  was  understood,  its 
uncanny  power  to  secretly  move  vessels  out  of  their  courses 
contrary  to  all  reckoning,  made  this  region  a  terror  to 
mariners.  But,  if  storms  were  produced  by  this  junction, 
the  pressure  of  the  opposing  stream.s  upon  each  other  and 
the  coast  of  North  Carolina,  for  centuries,  caused  all  her 
rivers  to  slow  up  so  much  as  they  entered  the  ocean,  that 
they  dropped  their  silt  and  sand,  which  their  succeeding 
waters  at  first  built  up  into  alluvial  lowlands ;  and  then,  as 
these  drew  nearer  deep  water,  the  Gulf  stream  built  up  a 
barrier  of  the  most  perfect  lacery  of  bars  and  dunes  in 
front  of  the  whole  state  to  be  found  anywhere  in  the  world. 
To  introduce  shifting  bars  and  dunes  into  this  stormy  pro- 
jection into  the  ocean,  and  the  dark  uncannily  moving 
Stream,  was  to  make  this  cape,  which  was  given  the  name 
Hatteras,  or  "Hatteresk,"  from  a  tribe  of  Indians  found 
there,  famous  throughout  the  maritime  world  as  "the  grave- 
yard of  the  ocean.'"     The  pressure  of  the  volume  of  water 

^  The  following  excerpt  from  a  poem  by  Joseph  W.  Holden,  entitled  "Hat- 
teras," says: 

"Yon  lifeless  skull  shall  speak  to  me, 
This  is  Golgotha  of  the  Sea! 
And  its  keen  hunger  is  the  same 
In   winter's  frost  or  summer's  flame." 

With  this  peculiar  front  on  one  end  of  the  State,  the  other  end  has  the 
distinction  of  having  the  highest  mountain  peak  in  the  eastern  half  of  the 
United  States.  The  artist,  Alfred  S.  Waugh,  thus  apostrophizes  it  in  The 
Greensboro  Patriot,  30th  Oct,   1836: 

"mT.     MITCHELL 

"Proud  monarch  of  a  cloud  capp'd  race. 
Why  hide  from  us  your  royal  face 

And  be  but  seldom  seen? 
Why  do  you  thus  in  sullen  mood 
Around  you  dash  the  vap'ry  flood 

As  if  you  ne'er  had  been? 

"Why  o'er  your  sides  the  screen  let  fall? 
Why  shroud  yourself  in  mystic  pall 

And  hide  your  height  from  view? 
Is  it  that  conscious  of  your  size 
You  lift  your  head  above  the  skies 

To  bid  the  world  adieu? 

"Or  that  you  fear  the  painter's  art 
Might  from  you  take  in  whole  or  part 

Your  glories  newly  known, 
That  thus  from  public  gaze  you  flee 
And  show  yourself  to  none  but  me 

From  top  of  yellow  Roan?" 


LEGACY  OF  LOST  ATLANTIS  53 

from  the  rivers  of  North  Carolina,  penned  up  within  this  re- 
markable barricade,  was  not  sufficient  to  preserve  many  open- 
ings or  inlets,  or  keep  clear  what  were  preserved;  while  it 
built  more  lands  and  cut  out  new  channels,  as  though  accord- 
ing to  the  whim  of  the  moment.  It  was  thus,  that  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh's  Roanoke  Island  was  formed  just  within  the  lacy- 
barrier,  when  there  was  an  inlet  near  it ;  and  it  was  these 
obstacles  that  finally  drove  his  enterprise  to  the  Chesapeake. 
For  behind  these  barriers  were  two  main  bodies  of  water, 
one,  Pamlico  Sound,  over  half  as  large  as  the  Chesapeake, 
and  Albemarle  larger  than  Delaware  Bay,  both  nearly  encom- 
passing a  great  peninsula  containing  over  5000  square  miles 
of  heavily  over-grown  swamp  lands,  while  great  flat  alluvial 
plains  stretched  back  of  these,  the  whole  constituting  about 
two-fifths  of  the  state,  back  to  the  falls  of  the  various 
rivers. 

The  front  entrance  of  the  state,  therefore,  had  been  al- 
most closed  by  the  sinking  of  lost  Atlantis  and  her  watery 
offspring,  the  Gulf  Stream.  The  very  best  inlet  in  use  in 
1821  was  that  leading  to  Wilmington,  and  it  had  a  channel 
of  but  seventeen  feet  at  high  tide,  and  but  eleven  feet  before 
Wilmington  was  reached.^  The  chief  inlet  to  the  Sounds 
and  their  tributaries  was  Ocracoke,  half  way  between  Capes 
Hatteras  and  Lookout,  with  the  pressure  of  water  so  great 
that  there  was  no  perceptible  tide;  while  the  bars  allowed 
vessels  drawing  only  eight  feet  of  water  to  enter.  The  in- 
let near  Cape  Lookout,  at  Beaufort,  had  been  held  by  many 
to  have  the  greatest  possibilities,  as  it  had  fourteen  feet  of 
water  and  a  fine  harbor  within;  but,  to  make  it  useful  to  the 
Sounds,  canal  connections  would  be  necessary,  a  not  very 
formidable  undertaking.  However,  to  ask  Wilmington,  mis- 
tress of  the  Cape  Fear  river  valley,  to  endorse  the  creation 
of  this  effective  rival,  or  to  ask  the  rich  Roanoke  planters 
to  build  up  a  port  so  far  away,  when  Virginia's  Norfolk  or 
Petersburg  were  so  much  nearer,  was  to  ask  the  impossible, 

^  A  Memorial  from  the  Inhabitants  of  Wilmington  to  the  Legislature  on 
December  3,  1822,  says  that  before  "the  great  storm"  of  1763,  the  Cape  Fear 
bar  allowed  twenty  feet  of  water  at  high  tide,  but  this  storm  made  a  "New 
Inlet,"  while  in  1813  nearly  a  mile  of  the  Cape  was  washed  away,  since  which 
the  bar  is  all  right,  but  the  flats  are  worse,  and  they  ask  relief.  Papers  of  the 
Assembly,  1821-2,  Historical  Commission,  Raleigh. 


54  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

especially  when  the  constitution  of  1776  left  these  eastern 
leaders  dominant  in  the  state. 

Herein  was,  therefore,  the  greatest  peculiar  problem  of 
North  Carolina — the  obstacles  to  a  great  port.  Its  vital 
nature  may  be  realized  by  thinking  of  a  state's  port  as  her 
heart  and  head.  What  were  Massachusetts  without  her 
Boston ;  New  York  State  without  her  city  of  the  same  name ; 
Pennsylvania  without  her  Quaker  metropolis,  Philadelphia; 
Maryland  without  her  Baltimore ;  Virginia  without  her  Nor- 
folks  and  Richmonds ;  or  South  Carolina  without  her 
Charleston?  The  metropolitan  port  is  the  head,  the  heart, 
the  organizing  center  of  finance,  and  all  great  enterprise,  the 
keystone  of  the  state's  arch. 

As  a  consequence,  when  these  obstacles  drove  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh's  enterprises  to  the  Chesapeake,  Norfolk  became  the 
port  of  chief  entry  into  the  northeastern  corner  of  the  colony 
on  the  northern  waters  of  the  Albemarle,  and  here  grew  up 
the  first  chief  settlements.^  As  the  grant  of  Carolina  in  1665 
stretched  from  that  line  below  Norfolk  down  to  include  all 
of  northern  Florida,  and  westward  to  the  ocean,  there  were 
some  settlements  grew  up  in  the  Cape  Fear  region  over  150 
miles  beyond  the  swamps  and  penned  in  waters  of  the 
Sound,  which  was  formed  into  Clarendon  county,  most  of 
which  was  below  Cape  Fear.  Consequently  about  1689,  the 
two  settlements  became  known  as  North  Carolina,  mean- 
ing the  Albemarle  settlements  and  South  Carolina,  those 
below  and  about  the  Cape  Fear  river  and  cape.  Some  settle- 
ments began  to  occur  between  these  on  Pamlico  Sound,  one 
at  Bath,  becoming  the  center  of  a  new  county  of  the  same 
name  covering  all  the  colony,  except  the  two  regions  men- 
tioned ;  so  that  up  to  1722,  when  John  Morehead  I,  was  mov- 
ing up  the  "Northern  Neck"  of  Virginia,  there  had  been  three 
counties:  1.  Albemarle,  covering  both  banks  of  that  Sound 
and  the  Roanoke  and  Tar  valleys,  of  which  Edenton  became 
the  chief  town ;  2.  Clarendon,  roughly  covering  the  Cape  Fear 
River  valley,  but  abolished  in  1667,  of  which  Wilmington 
became  the  head ;  and  3.  Bath,  the  space  between,  but  after 

^  It  should  be  added  that  many  settlers  in  this  region,  when  the  boundary 
was  unsettled,  thought  they  were  still  in  Virginia. 


Carolina,  1665 


North  Carolina,  c.   16S9 


Maps  Showing  Origin  of  North   Carolina 

Prepared  by  the  author 

Westward  extension  varied  with   variation   of   British   claims 


LEGACY  OF  LOST  ATLANTIS  55 

1667,  covering  all  the  rest  of  the  colony  with  Washington 
town  later  to  displace  Bath,  and  the  Xeuse  with  the  Ger- 
man and  Swiss  settlement  of  Xew  Bern  (later  written  Xew- 
bernj  at  the  head  of  the  estuary  as  chief  inland  port,  both 
dependent  on  Ocracoke  Inlet,  with  the  Swiss  town  leading. 
These  two  big  counties  were  divided  into  precincts,  which  in 
1739  became  counties  themselves,  thereby  abolishing  the  two 
mother  counties  and  creating  fifteen:  in  old  Albemarle,  be- 
ginning at  the  east  were:  1.  Currituck;  2.  Camden;  3.  Pas- 
quotank ;  4.  Perquimans  ;  5.  Chowan — north  of  the  Sound ; 
6.  Tyrrell,  south  of  it ;  7.  Bertie,  westward ;  and  8.  Edge- 
combe— extending  southward  nearly  to  Raleigh  site  and  west 
to  what  is  now  Stokes  county ;  while  in  old  Bath,  also  begin- 
ning in  the  east,  were,  9.  Hyde;  10.  Beaufort;  11.  Craven; 
12.  Carteret;  13.  Onslow;  14.  Xew  Hanover;  and  15. 
Bladen — the  frontier  county  extending  to  the  Pacific  Ocean. 
It  will  be  observed,  therefore,  that  the  first  eight,  or  Albe- 
marle counties  are  those  of  the  Roanoke  and  Tar  rivers  and 
Sound  valleys  and  that  they  thus  had  a  special  community  of 
interest  at  this  early  date  which  they  were  destined  never 
to  lose ;  but  the  latter  seven,  or  Bath  counties,  were  divided 
in  interest  because  four  of  them — Hyde,  Beaufort,  Craven 
and  Carteret — were  more  identified  with  Pamlico  and  the 
X'^euse  valley,  while  Onslow  was  between  them  and  the 
two  big  counties  of  Xew  Hanover  and  Bladen,  which  cov- 
ered the  Cape  Fear  River  valley,  stretching  like  a  wide 
ribbon  northwestward  through  the  center  of  the  colony 
almost  to  the  mountains  at  the  Virginia  line.  These  two 
sections,  therefore,  had  no  community  of  interest — indeed, 
were  essentially  rivals. 

All  three,  however,  were  also  cut  off,  in  some  measure, 
from  their  back  country,  by  the  beginnings  of  elevation  to 
what  is  called  the  Piedmont  Plateau,  a  line  roughly  approxi- 
mating a  parallel  to  the  coast,  but  with  slight  curve  from 
near  the  first  shoulder  in  the  South  Carolina  boundary  north- 
eastward, east  of  Raleigh  site,  to  somewhat  below  the  Roa- 
noke crossing  of  the  Virginia  line,  where  are  a  dozen  miles 
of  rapids.  The  Tar  rapids  are  more  scattered ;  those  of  the 
Neuse  at  Smithfield;  ar>d  those  of  the  greater  Cape  Fear  at 


56  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Fayetteville,  while  her  tributaries  are  lined  with  falls  and 
rapids.  All  of  which  was  not  designed  to  encourage  early- 
immigration  to  these  upper  territories,  by  water. 

All  of  this,  however,  leaves  a  great  triangle,  based  on  the 
South  Carolina  line,  between  the  Cape  Fear  river  ribbon-like 
valley  and  the  mountains — almost  one- fourth  of  the  colony 
— unaccounted  for,  which  is  drained  by  two  South  Carolina 
rivers,  the  Yadkin  and  the  Catawba,  and  were  consequently 
unified  in  their  community  of  interest  with  South  Carolina, 
as  much,  if  not  even  more  than,  the  Roanoke  and  Tar  valleys 
with  Virginia — or  would  be  when  they  came  to  be  much 
settled.  The  mountains,  too,  "The  Land  of  the  Sky,"  were 
always  turning  their  eyes  toward  the  Mississippi  valley  with 
a  unity  of  isolation  of  their  own.  And  still,  while  these  eco- 
nomic interests  made  this  and  the  other  divisions  of  the  state 
at  an  early  period,  and  ethnological  and  religious  groups 
added  to  the  complexity,  a  political  grouping  was  to  take 
place  with  increased  settlement,  that  was  to  prove  the 
more  powerful,  as  shall  be  seen  presently,  for  it  was  destined 
to  unite  the  whole  Piedmont  plateau  and  the  mountains  as 
well,  against  the  ancient  eastern  alluvial  plains. 

For  Albemarle  county  was  settled  chiefly  by  English, 
many  of  whom  were  Quakers,  while  the  Newbern  settlement 
were  chiefly  German  and  Swiss,  largely  destroyed  by  the 
Tuscarora  war  of  1712-15  ;  and  the  Cape  Fear  settlers,  about 
the  mouth  of  that  river,  were  also  English.  The  sturdy 
permanent  element  and  larger  than  the  latter  two,  however, 
and  later,  was  first  the  Scotch  Highlanders,  who  located  at 
the  falls  of  the  Cape  Fear,  where  Fayetteville  became  their 
center,  and  finally  the  greatest  mass  of  Scotch-Irish  and 
Germans,  with  many  English  Quakers,  came  down  the  Shen- 
andoah, or  the  Piedmont,  from  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia, 
into  the  Piedmont  and  with  such  rapidity  and  in  such  num- 
bers that  it  almost  became  like  a  new  colony,  encouraged 
thereto  by  the  successive  Scotch-Irish  executives.  Governors 
Johnston,  Rowan  and  Dobbs. 

The  estimated  population  of  these  fifteen  counties  in  1739 
was  probably  about  65,000,  for  the  estimate  for  1729  was 
35,000  and  1752,  was  100,000;  but  it  rose  to  200,000  at  the 


Tlie  Two   Original   Counties  of   1696   created  after  and   over  Original   Precincts 


(2) 
The  Two  Original  Counties  showing  Precincts  created   from   1672  to   1705,   Bath 

a  Precinct  until   1696 


The    Two    Original    Counties    showing    Precincts    created    from     1705    to    1712, 
remainders   of    Bath    and    Albemarle    serving   as   Precincts 


The  Two   Original   Counties   showing   Precincts,    1712    to    1722 


North  Carolina  County  i 

Prepared   by 

Precincts    (Counties   from    1739;:     1.    Chowan;     2.    Perquimans;     3.    Pasquotank;     4.  Currituck;     5.    Albe 

1705),  Craven  (to  1712);    9.  Bath  (after  1712),  C; 


I 


The  Two   Original   Counties  showing  Precincts  created  from    1722   to   1729, 
Alhemarle   ceasing   to    be    Precinct 


The   Two   Original   Counties  showing  Precincts  created   from    1729   to    1734 


Map  showing  all   Precincts  transformed   into   Counties,   1739 


Map   showing   all    Counties    created    from    1739    to    1749 

/ELOPMENT    FROM     1672    TO    1749 

e  author 

le   (to   1729),   Tyrrell    (from    1729);     6.    Hyde    (after   1705),   Bath    (before    1696);    7.    Beaufort; 
ret  (after  1722);    10.  Bertie;    11.  New  Hanover;    12.    Bladen 


8.    Bath    (to 


LEGACY  OF  LOST  ATLANTIS  57 

time  of  the  Stamp  Act,  and  250,000  in  1771 — five  years  be- 
fore independence  and  union  was  declared.  And  this  in- 
crease, while  in  a  measure  general  in  territory,  was  es- 
sentially an  extension  southward  from  the  rich  Roanoke 
valley  and  its  tributary  the  Dan,  and  that,  too,  from  its 
central  and  upper  courses  in  the  Piedmont.  This  vigorous 
element  has  been  said  by  some  to  have  begun  the  Revo- 
lution in  the  Regulators'  war  about  the  time  of  the  Stamp 
Act  in  what  was  then  Orange  county — a  western  sec- 
tion of  old  Albemarle  and  a  part  of  old  Bath,  extending  out 
to  include  what  became  young  Morehead's  old  home  coun- 
ties— a  struggle  that  lasted  six  years,  and  caused  a  great 
exodus  to  North  Carolina's  trans-mountain  territory  to  be 
later  known  as  Tennessee.  It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
the  population,  by  1774,  was  nearly  300,000,  when  a  call 
came  for  a  Continental  Congress  and  five  men,  chiefly  of  that 
old  Albemarle  population,  braved  the  British  executives' 
wrath  and  secured  a  convention  even  at  Newbern,  the  seat 
of  his  palace,  and  elected  three  Continental  Congressmen, 
one  of  whom  was  out  of  the  same  old  county.  Mecklen- 
burg, Rowan  and  Orange,  in  the  Yadkin-Catawba  triangle, 
and  upper  Cape  Fear,  westward,  were  the  frontier  counties 
then,  and  their  capitals,  Charlotte,  Salisbury  and  Hillsboro 
took  famous  part  when  the  guns  of  1775  began  to  reverber- 
ate. And,  as  has  been  said  previously,  it  was  here  the  clos- 
ing conflicts  of  the  Revolution  occurred.  Here  it  was,  too,  at 
Hillsboro,  after  the  flight  of  the  British  governor,  in  1776, 
that  a  provisional  government  was  formed.  In  this  old 
Albemarle-Roanoke  territory,  too,  at  Halifax,  on  April  12, 
1776,  their  Continental  Congressmen  were  directed  by  solid 
vote  to  secure  independence  and  union.  At  the  same  place, 
too,  on  December  18th,  following,  a  constitution  was  adopted 
by  their  convention. 

What  was  done  on  that  day,  just  a  week  before  Christ- 
mas, created  one  of  the  greatest  problems  in  the  state's  his- 
tory ;  and  it  was  to  take  nearly  eighty  years — the  better  part 
of  a  century,  to  secure  its  solution.  The  population  was  so 
distributed  that  the  old  principle  of  the  Provincial  Conven- 
tion with  each  county  equally  represented,  with  representa- 


58  JOHN  AIOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

tion  from  each  town  also,  was  continued  in  the  new  con- 
stitution of  1776/     No  evidence  has  been  found  that  this 
method  was  considered  vicious  at  that  time ;  but  by  1786, 
when  the  population  is  estimated  at  350,000,  and,  the  in- 
crease was  in  the  west,  and  the  great  principles  of  repre- 
sentation in  a  national  government  were  fiercely  discussed  in 
1787,  and  the  immediately  succeeding  years,  the  west,  or 
Piedmont  and  Mountain  region,  began  to  challenge  the  in- 
equality.    This  challenge,  demanding  new  western  counties, 
of  necessity,  was  met  by  the  east,  in  an  endeavor  to  retain 
her  power,  by  the  creation  of  u»-necessary  counties,  in  her 
territory  merely  as  an  off -set :  if  Caswell  in  the  west  is  cre- 
ated in  1777,  so  must  Camden  be,  in  the  east;  and  Wilkes 
in  the  west  must  be  off-set  by  Nash  in  the  east;  although 
Burke  was  created  in  the  west  with  no  counterpart  in  the 
east  that  year.     In  1778,  however.  Gates  was  created  in  the 
east,  also  Jones,  whereupon  Montgomery  was  erected  in  the 
west.     So  in  1779,  Lincoln,  created  in  the  west,  was  met  by 
Franklin  in  the  east;  and  Rutherford  and  Randolph  in  the 
west  by  Warren  and  Wayne,  east,  with  Richmond  on  the 
border.     War  and  its  aftermath  kept  them  too  busy  the  next 
four  years  to  create  counties,  but  when  Moore  was  created 
in  1784,  in  the  west,  Sampson  was  erected  in  the  east;  while 
the  erection  of  Rockingham  in  the  west  in  1785  was  balanced 
by  Robeson  the  following  year.     The  National  Constitution 
kept  them  busy,  but  in  1788,  when  Iredell  was  erected  in 
the  west  with  a  vigorous  challenge  of  this  method,  caused 
by  that  constitution,  no  eastern  one  was  created  to  balance  it. 
Three  years  later,  1791,  the  same  thing  occurred:  the  west 
secured  Buncombe  and  the  east  Lenoir,  but  when  the  west 
secured  Person,  it  was  acknowledged  a  gain.     Nothing  was 
done  then  for  eight  years,  when,  in  1799,  the  west  secured 
Ashe,  but  the  east  got  Washington  and  Greene,  which  re- 
duced the  gain  in  the  west.     Over  eight  years  passed  again, 
and  in  1808,  the  east  met  the  west's  Haywood  with  Colum- 
bus.    This  was  the   status  in   1821,  when   Quiescere  non 
Possum  began  to  be  effective  as  the  motto  of  young  John 

^  Free   negroes  were   given   the   right  of  suffrage. 


LEGACY  OF  LOST  ATLANTIS  59 

Motley  Morehead,  and  he  was  elected  to  public  life  from 
one  of  those  western  counties,  that  of  Rockingham,  one  of 
the  westernmost  of  the  old  Albemarle-Roanoke  group,  when 
the  west  began  to  be  restive  with  a  constitution  that  could 
be  manipulated  in  so  absurd  and  unjust  a  way. 

Furthermore,  the  lower  Roanoke  and  the  east  were  the 
region  of  great  plantations  and  consequently  of  great  slave 
population;  and  yet  it  was  the  Quakers  in  the  northeast  of 
old  Albemarle  that  were  the  first  to  give  vigor  to  the  emanci- 
pation movement,  which  later  was  pushed  with  power  by 
the  Manumission  Society  of  the  Quakers  in  Guilford  county 
in  the  west,  which  became  Morehead's  permanent  home ;  but 
of  this  theme  more  anon.  The  federo-national  ratio  of 
races  in  voting,  introduced  with  the  constitution  of  the 
United  States,  in  1787,  became  a  new  source  of  complexity 
between  the  east  and  the  west,  where  the  slaves  were  so 
much  fewer;  and  increased  the  resentments  of  both.  The 
federo-national  constitutional  ratifying  conventions  of  July, 
1788,  and  November,  1789,  at  Hillsboro  and  Fayetteville  re- 
spectively, in  the  first  of  which  it  was  merely  not  ratified 
and  in  the  second  ratified,  probably  furnished  no  other 
problem,  in  these  earlier  years ;  and  yet  it  was  destined  to 
furnish  almost  her  greatest  one.  The  new  political  science, 
which  locates  sovereignty  in  the  individual,  who  creates  state 
and  nation  with  leased,  revocable,  limited  sovereignty — the 
great  discovery  by  America — was  not  yet  generally  grasped ; 
and  it  was  over  a  year  after  this  ratification,  that  it  was  first 
formulated  by  James  Wilson  at  the  National  Capital,  in 
the  College  of  Philadelphia  (later  the  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania), in  his  so-called  "Law  Lectures" — and  then  many, 
many  years  before  it  was  widely  understood  and  adopted, 
anywhere  in  the  United  States.  Here  again  the  old  Roa- 
noke-Albemarle country  led  and  prevailed  in  ratification  ;  but 
young  Morehead's  revered  teacher,  Dr.  David  Caldwell,  did 
not  believe  it  was  "We  the  people,"  who  made  the  consti- 
tution, in  which,  however,  he  only  represented  people  in  all 
the  states  who  had  not  yet  grasped  the  new  political  science ; 
and  stood  as  much  in  fear  of  "consolidation,"  or  elimination 
of  states,  as  the  extreme  Federalists  did  of  anarchy.  And 
yet,  by  that  great  fear  the  party  of  Caldwell  and  Jones,  like 


60  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

that  of  Mason  in  Virginia  and  Bryan  in  Pennsylvania,  and 
all  those  who  wished  states  equally  represented  in  the  upper 
house  and  some  pre-cautionary  amendments,  themselves 
contributed  one  of  the  greatest  elements  to  the  new  politi- 
cal science,  namely,  protection  of  the  minority  by  the  upper 
house,  and  individuals  in  ways  provided  in  the  first  amend- 
ments. In  James  Iredell,  of  Edenton,  however,  was  repre- 
sented North  Carolina's  final  attitude,  and  in  him  produced 
the  father  of  one  school  of  constitutional  thought,  as  James 
Wilson  of  Pennsylvania  was  of  the  other,  until  the  American 
people  came  to  see  them  as  complimentary  in  a  more  perfect 
political  science.^ 

This  is  not  to  say  that  North  Carolina  was  not  divided 
between  these  two  schools,  as  were  all  the  other  states ;  or 
that  even  the  old  Roanoke-Albemarle  country  was  not  also 
divided,  for  it  was ;  but  the  tendency  to  federo-nationaHsm 
was  led  by  old  Albemarle  county  at  the  earlier  period  and 
flourished  more  in  the  west,  when  that  new  population  began 
to  be  more  vigorous  in  leadership.  Federo-nationalism  in 
both  periods  meant  primarily  union ;  and  union  character- 
ized the  dominant  element  in  all  the  period  up  to  the  en- 
trance of  John  Motley  Morehead  into  public  life  from  Rock- 
ingham county.^     It  need  hardly  be  said  that  reference  is 

1  Hon.  H.  G.  Connor  and  Mr.  W.  W.  Pierson,  Jr.,  in  well-known  articles, 
have  made  the  point  that  the  idea  of  independence  of  states,  separately,  is  illus- 
trated in  the  period  from  March  until  November,  1789,  after  the  constitution 
became  effective,  but  before  the  people  of  North  Carolina  ratified  it;  but  North 
Carolina  did  ratify  it,  and  at  no  time  rejected  it,  and  was  merely  in  process  of 
ratification  and  was  a  part  of  United  States  territory,  nor  exercised  any  national 
functions.  The  case  of  Rhode  Island  even  cannot  reinforce  such  an  idea,  be- 
cause she  also  was  a  part  of  the  territory  of  the  United  States,  nor  exercised 
any  national  functions.  One  is  liable  to  forget  that  the  Declaration  was  one  of 
independence  and  union;  that  "the  United  States  in  Congress  assembled"  took 
over  the  imperial  or  national  powers  from  Great  Britain  coincidently  with  the 
Declaration  and  no  state  thought  of  such  a  thing  as  exercising  them  alone. 
Disagreement  with  a  form  of  constitution  does  not  break  up  the  meeting,  for 
there  is  an  automatic  previous  order  that  it  becomes  effective  with  a  certain 
majority.  That  majority  merely  patiently  waited  for  North  Carolina  and  Rhode 
Island  to  think  it  over.  Nothing  is  gained  by  trying  to  preserve  the  half-ideas 
that  both  Federalists  and  Republicans  then  had  in  their  groping  toward  a  real 
political  science.  Although  James  Wilson  is  more  easily  the  father  of  the  con- 
stitution than  any  other  man,  and  has  more  nearly  the  right  to  the  title  of 
father  of  political  science,  yet  he  did  not  appreciate,  until  later,  the  great  prin- 
ciple of  minority  protection  through  the  upper  house — a  principle,  which  like 
the  Federal  Reserve  System,  keeps  the  nation  from  being  led  by  an  American 
Prussia-like  majority  in  the  northeast.  The  devotion  to  the  union  in  North 
Carolina  for  the  first  three-quarters  of  a  century  is  one  of  the  most  striking 
facts  of  her  history. 

^  The  term  "federal"  properly  applies  to  union  between  states,  as  such,  and 
so  represents  that  part  of  the  government  called  the  Senate;  but  "national"  ap- 
plies to  that  part  resting  on  "We,  the  people,"  etc.,  namely,  the  House;  the 
executive  is  therefore  a  combination  of  the  two,  as  is  the  judiciary.  The  more 
accurate   term   to   describe   our   government   is    "federo-national." 


LEGACY  OF  LOST  ATLANTIS  61 

not  here  made  to  partisan  Federalism  or  partisan  Republico- 
Democracy ;  for  in  the  partisan  field,  North  Carolina  joined 
most  other  states  in  swelling  the  prestige  of  the  sage  of 
Monticello  and  admiring  the  Hero  of  New  Orleans  as  he 
began  to  appear  at  the  close  of  that  conflict.  In  the  midst 
of  these,  however,  the  federo-national  tendency  still  held. 
No  state  was  more  proud  of  the  union,  and  it  was  upon  this 
foundation  that  young  Morehead  based  his  leadership — the 
same  basis  on  which  Johnston  and  Iredell  built;  but,  as  has 
been  said,  this  furnished  no  serious  problem  at  this  time. 
North  Carolina's  problems  were  essentially  from  within,  not 
from  without. 

This  political  rivalry  betv/een  the  alluvial  east  and  the 
uplands  of  the  Piedmont  and  mountains,  was  the  basis  of 
most  of  her  other  problems :  Education,  Internal  Improve- 
ment, Geological  Survey,  Transportation,  Finance,  Com- 
merce, Land  Reclamation,  Agriculture,  Manufactures.  The 
alluvial  east  with  its  great  slave  plantations,  and  their  sim- 
plicity and  self-sufficiency,  could  not  arouse  in  themselves 
an  active  interest  in  these  great  questions,  which  were  a 
matter  of  life  and  death  to  the  Piedmont  and  mountains  ;  and 
this  sluggishness,  which  could  not  be  removed  but  by  a  po- 
litical revolution,  caused  an  exodus  of  vast  numbers  to  the 
western  and  southern  states.  And  still  the  population  in 
1790  was  393,751,  and  at  the  end  of  that  century,  478,103; 
while  in  1810  it  was  555,500  and  in  1820  was  638,829,  just 
the  year  before  young  Morehead  entered  the  Assembly. 
Nevertheless  the  effort  of  the  west  to  induce  the  east  to 
provide  for  these  elements  of  development  in  the  common- 
wealth, except  in  a  reluctant,  meager  manner,  intensified  the 
west's  political  feeling  and  their  determination  to  go  first 
to  the  root  of  the  matter,  namely,  secure  real  representation 
in  the  Assembly,  such  as  was  had  in  the  National  House  of 
Representatives  or  most  other  states.  They  well  knew  this 
was  transferring  political  power  to  the  west,  and  with  that 
power,  these  things  would  be  added  unto  them;  but  it  be- 
longed to  them  of  right ;  and  the  same  thing  was  in  process 
in  the  nation  at  large,  where  the  west  was  preparing  to 


62  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

elect  a  President  for  the  same  reason  and  with  the  same 
phenomena  of  transfer  of  poHtical  power.^ 

This  picture  of  the  problems  of  North  Carolina,  supple- 
mented by  that  of  Judge  Murphy,  whom  financial  failure 
had  overtaken  the  summer  before,  causing  him  to  resign  and 
return  to  practice  at  Greensboro,  for  a  time,  is  that  which 
was  before  the  mind  of  John  Motley  Morehead,  as  he  was 
chosen  to  go  to  Raliegh  and  take  part  in  their  solution  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  as  the  lower  house  was  then  called. 


1  The  session  of  the  Assembly  of  1819-20  was  almost  entirely  given  over  to 
this  fight;  and  this  was  taken  up  again  in  1821. 


V 

MoREHEAD  Attacks 
Educational  and  Constitutional  Problems 

1821 

On  August  9,  1821,  the  vote  cast  in  Rockingham  county 
elected  Nathaniel  Scales  to  the  State  Senate  and  John 
Motley  Morehead  and  James  Miller  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. The  results  were  of  course  not  known  from  all  the 
county  on  that  day;  but  probably  were  within  ten  days,  or 
by  the  20th.  By  this  time,  also,  it  began  to  be  evident  that 
the  twenty-five-year-old  Lawyer  and  Representative  of 
Rockingham  county  was  concerned  in  another  inauguration, 
namely,  in  the  state  of  matrimony,  for  on  August  25th,  he 
went  to  the  Court  House  in  Wentworth,  and  with  a  relative 
of  his  fiancee,  Jesse  Harper,  put  up  a  marriage  bond  for  $500 
to  Governor  Jesse  Franklin,  and  as  he  filled  it  out,  did  so 
with  the  usual  prospective  benedict's  trepidation  and  con- 
fusion writing  "Eliza"  first,  and  then  writing  "Ann"  over  it, 
adding  "Eliza  Lindsay,"  in  proper  order.^  Two  weeks  later, 
on  September  9th,  they  were  married  at  the  Lindsay  home 
near  Greensboro,  and  the  Representative  of  Rockingham 
county,  with  his  Guilford  county  bride,  had  the  unusual  ex- 
perience of  becoming  at  the  same  time  a  resident  of  another 
county  than  that  which  he  represented,  for  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Morehead  at  once  made  a  home  in  Greensboro,  which  was  to 
prove  permanent. 

By  the  time  the  usual  honeymoon  w^as  over,  say  some 
two  months,  or  to  be  exact,  on  November  19th,  Mr.  More- 
head  was  in  Raleigh  and  present  in  his  seat  in  the  House 
of  Commons  at  the  capitol.     This  building  was  just  two 

^  Marriage  Bonds  of  Rockingham  County,  Historical  Commission  of  N.  C, 
at  Raleigh. 

63 


64  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

years  older  than  young  Morehead,  himself,  having  been 
completed  under  Governor  Richard  Dobbs  Spaight,  in  1794. 
It  was  built  of  local  brick  and  the  State  Architect,  Wm. 
Nichols,  who  was  making  some  changes  and  additions  to  it, 
had  been  so  perturbed  by  rumors  to  the  contrary,  during 
the  summer,  that,  in  the  Raleigh  Register  of  July  27th,  he 
had  assured  the  public  that  all  would  be  ready  for  the 
regular  session.  Presumably  the  young  representative's 
bride  joined  him  in  the  "City  of  Oaks,"  as  the  capital  was 
well  called  in  that  day — a  place  of  2674  inhabitants,  con- 
siderably over  half  colored,  namely,  1497,  of  which  about 
one-seventh,  177,  were  free  negroes.  This  left  a  white 
population  of  only  1177.  It  was,  however,  the  third  city  or 
town,  in  size,  Newbern  being  the  largest,  at  3663,  of  which 
2188  were  colored  (268  free)  ;  and  Fayetteville  a  close  sec- 
ond, at  3532,  of  which  1614  were  colored  (277  free)  — 
strikingly  different  from  either  Newbern  or  Raleigh,  being 
the  seat  of  the  Scotch  Highlanders  who  took  less  to  slavery. 
The  capital  was  but  slightly  larger  than  Wilmington,  at  2633, 
with  far  over  half  colored,  1535  (only  102  free).  These 
were  the  larger  places,  Edenton,  Salisbury  and  Washington 
being  scarcely  more  than  villages,  with  1561,  1234  and  1034 
inhabitants  respectively ;  but  of  these  Salisbury  had  the  most 
white  people,  w^hile  Edenton  and  Washington  were  con- 
siderably over  half  colored,  so  that  Edenton's  white  popu- 
lation was  only  634.  These  were  the  principal  towns,  so  that 
Raleigh  had  a  very  respectable  place  as  a  capital  city,  when 
Representative  Morehead  of  Rockingham,  and  incidentally 
of  Guilford,  first  entered  there  upon  his  public  career. 

The  House  of  Commons  represented  counties  only,  not 
population — its  basis  being  practically  the  same  as  the  United 
States  Senate,  except  that  each  of  the  six  chief  towns  had  a 
representative,  and  also  Hillsboro  and  Halifax,  except 
Raleigh  and  Washington.^  Salisbury  and  Hillsboro  sent 
probably  the  ablest  and  most  influential  men,  the  former 
sending  Charles  Fisher,  who  was  easily  the  House  leader, 
while  the  latter  furnished  the  Speaker,  in  James  Mebane. 

1  This  representation  was  specLfied  in  the  constitution  of  1776,  when  Raleigh 
and  Washuigton  were  not  in  existence. 


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CONSTITUTIONAL  PROBLEMS  65 

D.  L.  Berringer  of  Raleigh  was  also  rather  prominent,  but 
Fisher  was  easily  the  leader  of  the  House.  He  was  only 
seven  years  older  than  Morehead,  a  native  of  Rowan  county 
and  educated  chiefly  by  Rev.  Dr.  McPheeters  of  Raleigh. 
Educated  for  the  law  also,  he  was  diverted  from  it,  to  the 
State  Senate  in  1818  and  Congress  in  1819-20,  but  was  now 
returned  to  the  House  of  Commons  as  leader  of  the  west 
in  their  proposed  attack  on  the  old  constitution,  and  was 
destined  to  so  continue  until  the  fight  was  won.  Young 
Morehead  enlisted  under  his  banner. 

In  the  organization  of  the  House,  young  Morehead  was 
assigned  to  his  first  committee  on  the  23rd  of  November; 
and  it  was  no  unimportant  one  either,  namely,  that  on  the 
settlement  of  the  boundary  between  North  Carolina  and  the 
states  of  Georgia  and  Tennessee,  a  necessity  in  the  disposal 
of  the  Cherokee  lands  in  that  corner  of  the  common- 
wealth. Four  days  later  he  was  added  to  the  committee  on 
Correcting  Bills  on  which  day  he  first  had  occasion  to  express 
himself  on  a  yea-and-nay  question,  voting  with  a  great 
majority  postponing  indefinitely  a  bill  relative  to  slaves  exe- 
cuted for  capital  offenses.  On  the  28th,  he  made  his  first 
motion,  namely,  that  the  Judiciary  Committee  consider  in- 
creasing of  penalty  on  Sheriffs  and  other  officers  for  fail- 
ing to  make  due  returns  of  writs,  etc.,  and  on  the  30th  pre- 
sented his  first  bill,  to  alter  an  act  of  1741  for  restraining 
taking  of  excessive  usury,  and  it  passed  first  reading.  The 
same  day  was  to  witness  his  first  experience  on  the  losing 
side,  when  he  voted  to  postpone  indefinitely  a  repealer  of  an 
act  of  1820  providing  for  payment  of  costs  when  a  slave 
was  convicted  of  a  capital  crime ;  but  on  December  1st  he  was 
effectively  against  a  bill  fixing  vacant  lands  at  5  cents  an 
acre;  while  on  the  4th  he  was  one  of  a  committee  of  two  to 
join  two  of  the  Senate  in  conducting  the  election  of  a  suc- 
cessor to  Governor  Franklin.^  It  was  the  6th,  before  the 
gubernatorial  deadlock  was  broken  by  the  election  of  Gen- 
eral Gabriel  Holmes  of  Sampson  county. 

^  It  may  be  noted  that  as  the  Governbr  was  elected  by  the  Legislature  under 
the  constitution  of  1776  and  was  given  almost  no  powers,  the  chief  executive 
became  a  mere  figure-head  and  voice  of  the  Assembly,  unless,  like  Johnston, 
and   Swain,  later,  he  happened  to  be  a  strong  personality. 


66  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

The  constitution  of  1776  had  provided  for  public  edu- 
cation, but  it  was  so  nearly  a  dead  letter,  that  efforts  to  make 
it  eft'ective  had  been  in  vain ;  but,  Francis  L.  Hawks  of  New- 
bern,  afterward  a  minister,  after  the  gubernatorial  election 
was  settled  on  the  same  day  proposed  a  resolution  for  an  in- 
quiry into  whether  the  Legislature  had  obeyed  the  consti- 
tution in  establishing  a  public  school  system,  and  directing 
the  formulation  of  plans,  if  it  had  not.  Young  Morehead's 
reputation  as  a  student  and  teacher,  as  well  as  lawyer, 
marked  him  for  fourth  place,  next  to  Charles  Fisher,  on  a 
committee  of  sixteen.  He  was,  therefore,  recognized  as  a 
lieutenant  leader  in  the  proposed  founding  of  a  public  school 
system  for  North  Carolina.  It  was  perfectly  natural,  also, 
that  this  newly  born  benedict  should,  on  the  same  day,  pre- 
sent a  bill  providing  for  recording  of  marriage  licenses,  as 
he  did,  and  it  passed  first  reading. 

Mr.  Morehead  was  very  active.  Governor  Holmes  was 
sworn  in  by  Chief  Justice  Taylor  on  the  7th  in  the  House, 
after  which  the  Rockingham  representative  was  made  one  of 
a  committee  of  five  to  consider  the  needs  of  orphans.  The 
red-letter  day,  however,  was  three  days  later,  December  10th, 
for  on  that  day  Mr.  Fisher,  paving  the  way  for  the  new 
educational  program,  put  through  a  motion  to  consider  the 
advisability  of  creating  a  fund  to  be  known  as  "The  Literary 
and  School  Fund  ;"^  while  he  also  put  through  a  resolution 
for  a  vote  of  the  people  on  a  Constitutional  Convention  on 
the  federal  ratio,  white  and  three-fifths  colored.-  Before 
this  got  into  Committee  of  the  whole  on  the  18th,  several 
things  occurred :  Morehead  lost  his  usury  bill  100 — to  25 ; 
Fisher  got  the  State  Library  put  in  the  west  wing  confer- 
ence room;  Fisher  proposed  a  road  through  the  Cherokee 
lands  to  meet  one  being  built  in  Tennessee ;  arrangements 
were  made  to  receive  the  new  statue  of  Washington ;  Fisher 


^  The  action  on  this  fund  seems  to  have  been  precipitated  in  part  by  the 
question  then  before  Congress  of  disposing  of  public  lands  for  educational  pur- 
poses in  each  of  the  states.  Maryland  and  New  Hampshire  had  approached 
North  Carolina  on  the  subject  and  a  committee  had  reported  on  it.  Raleigh 
Register,  J ^n.  4,  1822. 

-This  subject  had  already  been  introduced  in  the  Senate,  but  that  body 
curtly  refused  to  receive  it,  although  they  gave  it  somewhat  more  courtesy 
afterwards. 


CONSTITUTIONAL  PROBLEMS  67 

and  Morehead  failed  in  an  effort  to  make  a  change  in  David- 
son county ;  and  lost  and  won  in  some  yea-and-nay  votes. 

On  the  18th,  however,  came  action  on  the  constitutional 
question.  The  chief  executive,  at  this  time,  might  have 
used  the  exact  words  of  another  in  opening  this  session, 
when,  on  referring  to  important  subjects  before  it  he  used 
these  words :  "Of  these,  the  proposition  to  amend  the  con- 
stitution of  this  State,  first  introduced  into  the  General  As- 
sembly, in  1787,  and  which  has  continued  to  command  the 
public  attention  for  nearly  half  a  century,  is  regarded  as  most 
prominent.  .  .  .  The  proposition  to  change  the  system  in 
1787,  and  the  following  year,  was  introduced  and  sustained 
by  some  of  the  most  distinguished  statesmen  of  that  era, 
who  were  also  conspicuous  members  of  the  Congress  which 
framed  the  constitution  itself." 

It  may  be  explained,  before  quoting  this  executive 
further,  that  North  Carolina  extended  to  the  Mississippi 
river  in  1787  and  1788,  and  what  is  now  Tennessee  was 
nearly  covered  by  six  counties,  namely,  the  four  shown  in 
the  accompanying  map  of  1783 :  Sullivan,  in  the  northeast 
corner  of  vi^hat  is  now  Tennessee;  Washington,  stretching 
from  that  to  the  southern  boundary ;  Greene,  paralleling  that 
across  the  state ;  and  Davidson,  covering  somewhat  more 
than  the  northern  half  of  the  rest  of  the  state  to  the  Ten- 
nessee river — the  rest  being  unorganized ;  and  finally  the 
county  of  Hawkins,  carved  from  little  Sullivan,  and  Sumner, 
from  Davidson,  on  January  6,  1787.^ 

'Tt  was  adopted  in  both  instances  by  one  branch  of  the 
legislature,"  continues  that  executive,  "and  would  most 
probably  have  succeeded  in  the  other,  but  for  nearly  unani- 
mous opposition  of  the  members  from  the  counties  which 
now  constitute  the  state  of  Tennessee.  It  was  then,  as  at 
present,  the  source  of  contention  between  the  populous  and 
sparsely  settled  counties,  and  hence  the  change  was  uni- 
versally desired  by  the  maritime  portion  of  the  State.  The 
cession  of  our  western  territory  to  the  general  government, 
obviated  to  some   extent,  the   inequality   previously   com- 

1  Colonial  Records,  Clark,  Vol.  XXIV,  pp.  826  and  830.  The  accompany- 
ing map  is  from  one  in  Vol.  XVIII,  at  p.  496,  by  E.  W.  Myers. 


68  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

plained  of,  and  restored  temporary  harmony  to  our  public 
councils."^  Governor  Franklin,  however,  did  not  even  men- 
tion the  subject  and  declined  reelection. 

The  "temporary  harmony"  referred  to,  caused  by  the 
cession  to  the  nation  in  1790  of  what  is  now  Tennessee  fol- 
lowed by  its  erection  as  that  state  in  1796,  was  only  tempo- 
rary; for  the  state's  population  rose  from  393,751  in  1790  to 
638,829  in  1820 — an  increase  of  245,078  in  thirty  years,  or 
about  25,000  every  decade,  but  an  increase  that  was  so 
largely  west  of  Raleigh,  that  the  "populous"  and  "sparsely 
settled"  portions  gradually  became  reversed  in  location,  the 
west  becoming  relatively  more  "populous"  and  the  east 
relatively  more  "sparsely  settled !"  Therefore  soon  after  the 
census  of  1810  appeared,  the  west  began  to  want  revision 
and  the  east  to  take  the  conservative  position  of  the  extreme 
west,  or  Mississippi  valley  counties  of  1787!  And  the  past 
decade,  with  the  census  of  1820,  had  only  intensified  it  and 
now  the  fight  was  on  in  earnest  with  Fisher  of  Salisbury  in 
the  lead  and  Morehead  as  chief  lieutenant;  and  the  fray 
began  in  committee  of  the  whole  on  December  18,  1821. 
Mr.  Fisher  made  a  very  able  speech,  in  which  he  attacked  the 
"sacredness"  of  the  work  of  the  Revolutionary  fathers  in 
making  the  constitution  of  1776.  "Sir,"  said  he,  "the  Pro- 
vincial laws  and  customs  were  the  materials  out  of  which 
the  Constitution  [of  North  Carolina]  was  built,  and  the 
Constitution  is  little  more  than  a  compilation  from  these 
materials."  He  was  ably  answered  by  Mr.  Hawks  of  New- 
bern — the  largest  town  in  the  state — and  Mr.  Alston  of  Hali- 
fax.2  Whereupon  Mr.  Morehead  entered  upon  his  defense 
and  attack  on  the  opposition.  This  seems  to  be  his  maiden 
formal  effort  and  is  the  earliest  of  his  addresses  which  have 
come  down  to  us. 

In  this  debate  on  December  18,  1821,  Mr.  Morehead  said 
this  subject  was  one  of  great  interest  to  the  State,  and  on  the 
decision  of  which  no  man  could  feel  indifferent.     It  is  a 


^Executive  message  of  Gov.  David  L.   Swain,  17th  November,   1834. 

-  Hawks  was  tivo  years  younger  than  Morehead  and  both  died  the  same 
year.  He  had  studied  law  under  William  Gaston,  of  Newbem,  and  was  in  the 
Assembly  as  a  lawyer,  although  in  1827  he  was  ordained  in  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  and  becajne  one  of  the  most  distinguished  divines  in  New 
York  City. 


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CONSTITUTIONAL  PROBLEMS  69 

question  which  is  calculated  to  call  forth  that  kind  of  public 
feeling  which  is  necessary  for  the  welfare  of  the  republic. 

He  "was  sorry  to  see  anything  like  party  feeling  intro- 
duced into  this  argument.  He  must  tell  the  gentleman  from 
Newbern  (Mr.  Hawks)  that  he  had  misunderstood  the  re- 
mark of  the  gentleman  from  Salisbury  (Mr.  Fisher),  when 
he  said  we  will  have  a  Convention ;  it  was  not  the  language 
of  menace,  which  he  used,  but  of  prediction. 

"li  he  could  prevail  on  his  friends  from  the  East  to 
attend  dispassionately  to  a  plain  statement  of  facts,  he  should 
have  no  doubt  of  convincing  them  that  our  present  represen- 
tation is  unequal  and  unjust,  though  they  might  still  doubt 
the  policy  of  the  proposed  amendment. 

"But  the  gentleman  from  Newbern  has  endeavored  to 
excite  an  alarm  in  the  committee,  which  was  calculated  to 
prevent  a  fair  discussion  of  the  merits  of  the  question. 

"The  gentleman  from  Halifax  (Mr.  Alston)  had  com- 
pared some  of  our  large  and  small  counties  to  the  States  of 
New  York  and  Rhode  Island,  under  the  General  Govern- 
ment. [Mr.  A.  explained.]  How  are  these  States  repre- 
sented in  Congress?  Like  the  counties  in  this  State  in  the 
General  Assembly  ?  No,  sir ;  the  United  States  are  each  of 
them  distinct  and  independent  sovereignties,  whereas  our 
counties  are  marked  out  by  lines  changeable  at  the  will  of 
the  Legislature.  Congress  cannot  divide  a  State,  or  inter- 
fere with  it  at  all.  Mr.  Morehead  hoped,  therefore,  this 
comparison  will  pass  for  naught. 

"Do  we,"  he  asked,  "see  property  represented  in  the 
General  Government?  No;  the  Senate  is  composed  of  men 
representing  the  sovereignty  of  the  several  States.  Go, 
then,  to  the  House  of  Representatives.  Is  there  anything 
like  property  there  respected  ?  No ;  nothing  but  freemen, 
with  the  exception  of  three-fifths  of  other  persons,  which 
was  a  matter  of  compromise  with  the  Southern  States  at 
the  time  the  Constitution  was  formed. 

"And  is  there  any  reason,"  he  asked,  "why  property 
should  be  represented  in  this  government?  If  so,  how  would 
gentlemen  have  property  represented?  How  is  the  Senate 
at  present  composed?     Is  it  not  the  representative  of  the 


70  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

landed  interests  of  the  country?  Is  not  this  a  sufficient 
representation  of  property?  Would  you  have  your  slaves 
represented  as  in  the  general  government  ?  Would  you  have 
property  represented  in  both  houses?  If  so,  you  would  put 
it  in  the  power  of  wealth  to  dispose  of  the  destinies  of  your 
country. 

"But  the  gentleman  from  Newbern  says  that  Mr.  Jeffer- 
son and  Mr.  Madison,  whom  he  calls  the  high-priests  of  Re- 
publicanism, live  in  Virginia,  where  no  person  unpossessed  of 
freehold  property  is  permitted  to  vote  for  a  representative ; 
yet  he  says  they  do  not  complain,  nor  are  their  unrepresented 
people  less  ready  to  fight  the  battles  of  their  country.  Sir, 
in  the  late  contest  with  Great  Britain  we  have  seen  the  sturdy 
yeomanry  of  Virginia  ordered  to  Norfolk  for  her  protection ; 
we  have  seen  them  fall  victims  to  the  climate  and  to  expo- 
sure ;  and  they  now  lie  mouldering  in  the  dust,  sacrificed  by 
the  laws  of  a  country  in  which  they  had  no  voice ;  sacrificed 
by  the  laws  of  a  State  in  which  they  were  legislatively  anni- 
hilated." He  "admired  the  character  of  Virginia ;  he  rever- 
enced her  sages ;  but  he  hoped  he  should  not  be  considered  as 
a  political  infidel,  when  he  told  the  committee,  he  shuddered 
to  think,  that  the  poor  freemen  of  his  State  should  ever  be 
excluded  from  the  Legislative  councils  of  the  country. 

"To  whom,"  he  asked,  "did  this  country  belong,  when  it 
burst  the  British  fetters  and  became  independent?  It  cer- 
tainly belonged  to  the  whole  community,  and  not  to  the 
wealthy  alone.  Why,  then,  should  the  people  be  deprived 
of  any  privilege  for  which  they  jointly  fought  and  to  which 
they  are  justly  entitled?" 

He  "believed,  if  he  could  assure  himself  that  the  situ- 
ation of  this  State  would  always  remain  as  it  now  is,  he 
would  not  be  in  favor  of  calling  a  Convention ;  for  no  gentle- 
man of  that  committee  held  the  constitution  more  sacred 
than  he  did.  He  approached  it  with  that  awe,  with  which 
Moses  approached  his  God  while  the  thunders  of  Sinai  were 
playing  around  him ;  he  touched  it  with  that  diffidence  with 
which  the  Israelites  touched  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant.  But 
the  foundation  of  our  political  Fabric  is  rotting ;  we  must  re- 
pair it  in  time,  or  in  time  it  will  tumble. 


CONSTITUJIONAL  PROBLEMS  71 

"What,"  he  asked,  "was  the  situation  of  things  at  the  time 
when  our  present  constitution  was  formed?  The  Eastern 
part  of  the  State  was  ahnost  the  only  part  that  was  in- 
habited. The  West  had  but  few  settlers.  But  our  lands  are 
now  rising  in  value,  and  our  population  is  every  day  in- 
creasing, while  the  Eastern  part  of  the  State  remains  much 
the  same.  Take  us,"  said  he,  "poor  as  we  are,  and  where 
is  the  boasted  superiority  of  the  East?"  He  apologized  for 
this  remark,  but  said,  the  moment  this  subject  was  intro- 
duced, the  gentleman  from  the  East  made  it  a  party  question. 

He  said,  "he  had  made  a  few  calculations  on  this  subject, 
which  he  would  offer  to  the  committee.  In  this  estimate  he 
had  given  Granville  to  the  West  [north  of  Wake  county,  the 
seat  of  the  capital].  He  had  considered  Wake  as  neutral,  as 
she  ought  to  be.  She  is  as  much  the  darling  of  the  West  as 
of  the  East.  He  had  made  his  calculation  first  as  the  gentle- 
man from  Newbern  wished  it  to  be,  according  to  Federal 
numbers. 

"The  total  amount  of  population  (including  slaves  and 
free  persons  of  color)  is  658,829.  The  whole  Federal  popu- 
lation of  the  State  is  556,839.  The  Federal  population  of 
the  27  Western  counties  is  305,015,  which,  reckoning  2993 
persons  to  send  a  member,  entitles  them  to  102  members, 
instead  of  81,  which  they  now  send.  The  Federal  population 
of  the  34  Eastern  counties  is  234,100,  which  entitles  her  to  78 
members  only,  instead  of  102,  which  she  now  sends.  The 
Federal  population  of  Wake  county  entitles  her  to  six  mem- 
bers. Representation,  then,  upon  the  Federal  principle, 
entitles  the  West  to  21  members  more,  and  the  East  to  24 
less  than  they  now  send  tO'  the  Legislature,  and  Wake  to  3 
more. 

"Go  to  the  next  principle  of  representation :  that  of  free 
white  population  and  taxation.  The  taxes  of  the  whole  State 
(exclusive  of  clerks  and  auctioneers)  is  $65,735.60.  Taxes 
of  the  Western  counties  are  $31,184.09;  of  the  Eastern, 
$32,203.41 ;  of  Wake  county,  $2348.07.  Estimating  $353  for 
each  member  the  Western  counties  will  send  88 ;  the  Eastern, 
91 ;  and  Wake,  6. 

"Go  to  the  next  branch  of  the  principle,  that  of  free  white 


72  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

population,  to  which  the  opposers  of  these  resolutions  have 
the  greatest  objection,  and  the  Western  part  of  the  State 
will  be  entitled  to  31  more  members  than  she  has  at  present, 
and  the  Eastern  part  to  34  less. 

"For  the  total  white  population  of  the  State  is  419,200, 
The  Western  counties  have  253,235,  which,  allowing  2253 
persons  to  send  a  member,  will  give  her  112  members.  The 
Eastern  counties  have  154,014,  which  will  give  to  them  68 
members.  The  white  population  of  Wake,  being  11,951, 
gives  to  her  5  members. 

"So  that  upon  the  principle  of  free  white  population  and 
taxation  combined,  the  Western  counties  are  entitled  to  100 
members,  19  more  than  at  present.  The  Eastern  counties,  to 
79  members,  which  are  twenty-three  less  than  at  present. 
Wake  county,  to  5  members,  instead  of  3. 

"Then  compound  the  representation  of  the  Federal  popu- 
lation, free  white  population  and  taxation,  and  the  Western 
counties  are  entitled  to  101  members,  20  more  than  at  pres- 
ent, and  the  Eastern  counties  will  be  entitled  to  79  members, 
23  less  than  at  present.  So  that,  upon  the  very  principles 
upon  which  the  opponents  of  the  resolutions  contend,  the 
West  evidently  labor  under  important  grievances.  But 
wealth  is  sufficiently  represented  in  the  Senate  to  afford  it 
self  protection.  The  representation  of  our  State  should 
be  upon  the  principle  of  free  white  population,  requiring 
certain  qualifications  in  the  representatives,  and  in  the  elec- 
tors of  one  branch  of  the  Legislature,  barely  sufficient  to 
protect  wealth. 

"Wealth  fattens  on  the  necessities  of  poverty;  it  can 
bribe ;  it  can  corrupt ;  and  whenever  it  shall  have  a  predomi- 
nant weight  in  our  government,  we  may  bid  farewell  to  the 
boasted  freedom  of  our  Republic,  and  ignominiously  sub- 
mit to  the  yoke  of  Aristocratic  Slavery. 

"The  34  Eastern  counties  having  a  free  white  population 
or  154,014,  send  to  the  Legislature  102  members;  the  27 
^^'estern  counties  send  81  members,  which,  in  the  same  ratio 
of  the  East,  represent  122,229,  leaving  a  balance  of  131,024 
free  white  persons  together  with  all  the  negroes  of  the  West, 
arrayed  against  the  negroes  of  the  East,  and  unrepresented. 


CONSTITUTIONAL  PROBLEMS  7Z 

Add  to  this,  Sir,  the  vast  extent  of  the  West,  the  health  of 
the  climate,  the  territory  acquired  from  the  Indians,  the  vast 
increase  of  the  value  of  the  lands  and  wealth  of  the  West 
from  internal  improvement ;  add  these  to  the  grievances 
under  which  we  labor,  and  ere  long  they  will  become  in- 
tolerable, not  only  to  patriotism,  but  to  patience  itself. 

"When  I  predict,  under  these  circumstances,  a  Con- 
vention will  be  had,  can  the  prophecy  be  doubted? 

"We  have  now  met  the  call  of  the  gentleman  from  New- 
bern.  Here  is  our  grievance,  which  we  wish  to  be  at- 
tended to. 

"No  man  would  be  more  unwilling,"  said  he,  "than  my- 
self to  touch  the  constitution,  if  I  did  not  think  the  occasion 
called  for  it,  and  that  the  time  is  peculiarly  favorable.  The 
proposition  before  the  committee  ought  not  to  be  considered 
in  the  light  of  a  contest  for  power.  We  do  not  ask  from  our 
Eastern  brother  anything  to  which  we  are  not  entitled.  Nor 
would  we  ask  for  a  correction  of  this  grievance,  if  it  were 
not  constantly  accumulating.  For,  to  do  our  Eastern  breth- 
ren justice,  we  acknowledge  they  have  wielded  their  power 
with  a  great  degree  of  justice  and  moderation,  and  it  is  hoped 
they  will  continue  to  do  so. 

"It  will  be  to  the  East,  if  we  are  ever  invaded.  It  may 
be  expected  your  protection  will  not  be  found  in  your 
negroes;  it  will  be  found  in  yourselves,  or  in  the  strength 
of  the  West. 

"For  equal  rights  and  privileges  our  fathers  jointly 
fought,  and  bled  and  died,  and  their  bones  now  lie  hallow- 
ing the  soil  for  the  freedom  of  which  they  fell  a  sacrifice. 

"But  give  us  these,  and  when  the  demon  of  desola- 
tion shall  hover  around  your  borders,  and  the  tragedy  of 
Hampton  is  to  be  performed  on  your  shores,  call  on  your 
brethren  of  the  West,  and  the  mountains  will  roll  their  might 
to  the  main,  carrying  protection  to  your  wives,  your  children, 
your  homes  and  your  country." 

The  speeches  of  Messrs.  Fisher  and  Morehead  were  the 
objects  of  Eastern  attack,  and  Thomas  W.  Blackledge  of 

1  Raleigh  Register  and  North  Carolina  Gazette,  1st  Feb.,  1822,  from  "Debate 
on  the  Convention  Question,"  House  of  Commons,  18th  Dec,  1821. 


74  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Beaufort  was  particularly  vigorous,  complaining  that  the 
westerners  brought  up  this  subject  every  year.  Willis 
Alston  of  Halifax  tried  hard  to  head  off  the  eastern  and 
western  division  that  seemed  to  be  becoming  more  intense 
each  year,  claiming  that  it  was  un-natural ;  that  the  natural 
divisions  were  four,  not  two :  1.  The  old  Roanoke- Albemarle 
counties,  clear  to  the  Tennessee  line ;  2.  The  Neuse  and  Tar 
valleys  up  to  Wake  and  New  Hanover;  3.  the  Cape  Fear 
ribbon  valley  up  to  Stokes  and  Rockingham ;  4.  The  rest  from 
Columbus  county  westward.  It  was  a  vigorous  fight  and  it 
classified  Fisher  and  Morehead  for  life,  but  when  the  vote 
came  on  the  19th  of  December  it  was  shelved  by  a  vote  of 
81  to  47,  every  one  of  the  counties  east  of  Robeson,  Cumber- 
land, Wake  (Raleigh)  and  Granville  being  against  a  con- 
vention as  "inexpedient."  Fourteen  of  these  eastern  coun- 
ties paid  less  than  their  share  of  cost  of  government,  while 
but  five  in  the  west  were  in  like  condition.  The  Senate 
treated  the  subject  no  better,  indeed  not  so  well ;  for  when 
Senator  Williamson  of  Lincoln  county  introduced  a  similar 
resolution,  they  practically  refused  to  entertain  it,  although 
they  reconsidered  the  next  day.  The  result  was  that  the 
great  main  object  of  the  session  was  lost,  on  this  19th  day  of 
December,  1821. 

While  Mr.  Morehead  went  to  and  fro  in  the  business  of 
law-making,  he  often  saw  Chief  Justice  John  Marshall,  who 
was  then  holding  the  national  Circuit  Court  of  this  circuit, 
as  had  Justice  James  Wilson  in  the  time  of  Washington. 
On  the  day  before  Christmas,  too,  he  took  part  in  the  recep- 
tion and  dedication  of  the  beautiful  statue  of  the  great  first 
President,  by  Canova,  in  the  rotunda  of  the  capitol.  This 
artistic  creation  from  Italy  had  been  made  from  the  artist's 
original  plaster  model,  probably  the  last  work  he  ever  did, 
for  he  died  the  following  October.  It  represented  the  great 
American  seated,  dressed  in  the  Roman  toga,  and  engaged 
in  writing  his  farewell  address.  It  stood  high  above  the 
spectator's  head,  on  a  large  pedestal,  on  whose  sides  were 
bas-reliefs  depicting  leading  victorious  scenes  in  his  life. 
It  was  destined  to  stand  there  for  only  a  decade  and  to  be 
beheld    in    admiration    by    m.ultitudes,    among   them    being 


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CONSTITUTIONAL  PROBLEMS  75 

Lafayette ;  for  it  was  calcined  in  the  destruction  of  that 
capitol  a  decade  later.^  Not  six  months  after  this  day,  John 
Adams  and  Thomas  Jefferson,  as  if  in  premonition  of  the 
deaths  on  the  same  day,  the  nation's  natal  day,  too,  ex- 
changed philosophical  letters  on  the  subject  of  old  age.  Rep- 
resentative Morehead  and  a  new  generation  were  coming  to 
their  own. 

The  session  only  lasted  until  the  29th,  and  but  few  other 
things  were  done  of  particular  moment  to  Mr.  Morehead, 
who  fought  the  big  eastern  majority.  The  new  Board  of 
Internal  Improvement  was  chosen  on  Christmas  Day,  and 
Prof.  Denison  Olmsted  was  voted  $100  to  defray  his  ex- 
penses in  a  voluntary  geological  survey  during  the  summer — 
a  field  in  which  this  state  was  destined  to  take  the  lead. 
And  on  the  next  day  a  Board  of  Physicians  was  proposed, 
Morehead  being  one  of  the  committee,  but  the  Senate  op- 
posed both  of  these  latter  two  projects.  He  was  also  in  the 
majority  which  tried  to  create  an  internal  improvement 
fund;^  as  he  was  also  on  a  bill  to  incorporate  the  Clubfoot 
and  Harlowe's  Creek  Canal  Company,  a  revision  of  the  act 
of  1813,  which  w^s  to  connect  the  Beaufort  Harbor  with  the 
Pamlico  Sound.  On  the  last  day  he  was  one  of  the  House 
nominees  for  trustee  of  the  University,  but  the  big  eastern 
majority  refused  to  elect  him;  and  with  the  close  of  the 
year  1821  Representative  Morehead  of  Rockingham  county, 
became  for  all  practical  purposes,  plain  Lawyer  Morehead 
of  Guilford  county,  his  future  home. 


1  The  original  plaster  model  of  Canova  still  exists  in  Italy,  and  the  Italian 
King,  in  1909,  gave  the  state  a  replica  in  plaster,  and  it  now  stands  in  the  Hall 
of  History  at  Raleigh.  See  Bulletin  No.  8,  N.  C.  Hist.  Comm.,  by  R.  D.  W. 
Connor. 

-  They  succeeded  in  getting  the  dividends  on  state  stock  in  the  Newbern 
and  Cape  Fear  (Wilmington)  State  Banks  to  the  amount  of  about  $25,000, 
voted. 


VI 

Other  Problems  Follow 

Personal,  Slavery,  Internal  Improvement,  Judiciary 

Criminals  and  Defectives,  Transportation 

Quakers  and  History 

1822 

The  experience  of  Lawyer  Morehead  in  challenging 
the  eastern  counties  was  calculated  to  give  a  wise  young 
man  of  twenty-five  years  pause.  It  might  naturally  seem 
to  him  that  if  wealth  was  so  powerful,  it  might  be  well  for 
him  to  provide  himself  with  it ;  even  if  Guilford  county  had 
not  already  had  able  men  whom  she  would  see  no  reason 
to  displace  with  a  young  new  citizen  from  her  daughter 
county  to  the  north/  So,  for  the  next  four  years,  he  de- 
voted himself  to  his  profession,  and  to  other  personal 
problems  quite  as  extensive,  if  not  more  so ;  for  John  Motley 
Morehead's  mind  teemed  with  development  in  every  line 
that  came  under  his  observation,  and  everything  that  he 
touched  flourished.  His  interests  at  this  particular  period 
were  so  many-sided,  as  they  always  were,  and  exact  record 
of  them  is  so  meager,  that  only  general  terms  can  be  used 
for  the  most  part,  at  least  for  this  period,  even  if  more  detail 
in  treatment  of  so  public  a  career  were  desirable. 

His  profession  as  a  lawyer,  of  course,  came  first  and  his 
practice  extended  to  County  Courts ;  the  Superior  Courts 
created  in  1777,  and  covering  the  state  with  eight  districts 


^  The  western  members,  in  1822,  called  an  extra  legal  constitutional  con- 
ference to  meet  in  Raleigh  on  November  10,  1823,  and  this  body  formulated 
such  a  constitution  as  they  thought  the  west  would  favor,  but  as  Mr.  Morehead 
had  no  part  in  it,  it  need  not  be  considered.  Its  quarrel  over  white  and  federal 
ratio  basis,  and  the  success  of  the  latter,  did  not  appeal  to  men  like  Morehead 
or  his  Quaker  constituency;  for  it  would  have  identified  the  middle  with  the 
east  and  left  political  power  as  it  was  essentially.  They  recommended  call  of 
a  convention  the  next  year  but  the  Assembly,  controlled  by  the  east,  ig^nored  it. 

76 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  11 

at  this  time,  his  own  being  the  Hillsboro  District ;  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  North  Carolina,  which  had  begun  its  exist- 
ence January  1,  1819;  and  the  United  States  District  and 
Circuit  Courts.  There  is  no  record  of  his  admission  to  the 
bar  of  the  National  Supreme  Court,  and  it  is  not  known  that 
he  had  practice  outside  of  the  state.  He  had  a  widely- 
extended  practice  within  the  state,  however,  and,  according 
to  one  authority,  was  particularly  distinguished  in  criminal 
law. 

The  earliest  incident  discovered  is  one  in  which  both  he 
and  William  A.  Graham  were  associate  counsel  with  his  old 
preceptor,  Judge  Archibald  D.  Murphy,  and  the  writer, 
Lyndon  Swaim,  one-time  editor  of  the  Greensboro  Patriot, 
says  it  was  "near  sixty  years  since"  [writing  under  date 
January  19,  1883,  in  the  Patriot],  which  would  make  it  near 
1823,  the  period  now  under  consideration.  It  was  in  a  case 
locally  known  in  Randolph  county,  in  whose  court  the  inci- 
dent occurred,  as  "The  Fishtrap  Suit."  "John  M.  More- 
head,  then  young  at  the  bar,  and  I  think  also  W.  A.  Graham, 
still  younger,  were  associate  counsel,"  says  Mr.  Swaim. 
"The  suit  made  a  great  noise  in  the  neighborhood,  and  I 
heard  the  parties,  the  witnesses,  the  lawyers,  etc.,  thoroughly 
discussed.  Though  a  mere  boy,  the  circumstances  and  the 
personnel  made  a  more  vivid  impression  on  my  mind  than 
many  a  more  important  matter  since.  Judge  Murphy  was, 
in  my  eye,  the  central  figure.  He  was  very  small  of  stature, 
thin  and  pale,  with  a  kindly,  kindling  eye,  and  a  gentleness, 
nay  sweetness  of  expression  almost  feminine.  He  was 
dressed  with  remarkable  neatness,  his  coat  hanging  some- 
what loosely  upon  his  attenuated  frame.  The  lifting  of  his 
hat  as  he  stepped  into  the  bar,  his  bow  to  the  judge,  his  greet- 
ing to  every  member  of  the  bar  and  to  the  officers  of  the 
court — nobody  was  omitted — was  such  an  exhibition  of  self- 
possession  and  grace  as  I  had  never  witnessed  before,  and 
such  as,  I  yet  verily  believe,  is  seldom  seen  outside  of  a 
Parisian  salon;  and  the  crowning  charm  was,  he  made 
everybody  feel  that  he  was  sincere.  His  hand-shake,  even 
with  a  boy,  left  a  pleasant  memory.  There  was  no  hurry 
about  it ;  he  took  time  to  attend  to  the  matter  in  hand  (pardon 


78  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the  pun)  ;  the  softly  repeated  pressure  and  the  lingering 
glance  of  his  dark  eyes  were  magnetic  in  effect.  I  have 
never  seen  but  one  likeness  of  him,  an  engraving  in  the 
University  Magacine,  some  years  ago,  probably  from  an  old 
family  portrait  when  he  was  very  young.  It  was  Raphael- 
like in  rounded  grace  of  outline  and  softness  of  expression. 
The  matured  face  that  I  saw  had  the  harder  lines  fixed  by 
time  and  thought  and  care — nothing  left  but  the  gentle  ex- 
pression. The  Fishtrap  trial  occupied  most  of  the  week. 
The  points  are  beyond  recollection.  But  I  remember  an  ob- 
servation made  about  Morehead.  The  second  day's  exami- 
nation of  witnesses  was  in  progress,  when  Murphy  remarked 
to  Morehead,  'My  young  friend,  you  appear  to  be  taking 
no  notes  of  the  evidence.'  'No,  Sir,'  he  replied,  'I  depend 
upon  my  memory.'  The  senior  expressed  his  apprehension 
of  the  result.  But  when  Morehead  came  to  'sum  up'  before 
the  jury,  his  memory  served  him  with  remarkable  correct- 
ness and  particularity.  His  success  in  this  case  laid  the  first 
solid  foundation  stone  in  the  building  up  of  his  reputation 
at  the  bar.'" 

"Mr.  Morehead,"  says  a  member  of  the  Greensboro  bar 
of  1907,  "was  greatly  devoted  to  the  profession  of  law,  and 
while  he  was  eminent  in  the  practice  of  the  civil  courts  he 
was  especially  great  and  successful  in  the  criminal  courts, 
and  his  practice  covered  a  number  of  counties.  He  was  an 
acknowledged  leader  in  the  courts  in  which  he  practiced.  He 
was  retained  in  nearly  all  the  murder  cases  in  the  part  of  the 
state  where  he  resided  and  never  had  a  defendant  for  whom 
he  appeared  convicted  of  murder  or  hanged."- 

"When  I  entered  the  profession,"  says  another  dis- 
tinguished lawyer  of  a  later  date,  'T  met  him  here  [Greens- 
boro] at  the  May  term  of  the  County  Court,  and  found  him 
occupying  the  position  of  leader  on  his  circuit.  I  was  pleased 
with  his  appearance,  was  attracted  by  his  amenity  and  fasci- 
nated by  his  talents.  His  personal  presence  was  imposing,  his 
face  beamed  with  kindness,  and  when  he  addressed  the  court 


1  The  Papers  of  Archibald  D.  Murphy,   Hoyt,   Vol.    II,   pp.   432-3 

2  Publications  of  The  Guilford  County   Literary  and   Historical  As 
Vol.  I,  p.  57,  The  Bench  and  Bar  of  Guilford  County  by  Levi  M.  See 


Association, 
Scott. 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  79 

and  jury,  I  heard  him  with  delight,  and  was  filled  with  admi- 
ration.'" 

On  January  17,  1822,  he  was  among  those  whom  conflict 
of  new  dates  of  the  Superior  Court,  made  by  the  Legislature, 
caused  inconvenience  and  loss.  Lawyer  John  M.  Dick,  of 
Greensboro,  writing  to  Thomas  Ruffin  at  Hillsboro,  on 
the  above  date  says :  "You  inform  me  that  our  legislature 
has  legislated  you  out  of  two  courts  and  express  a  hope  that 
you  are  the  only  sufferer  among  your  brethren.  I  am  a 
fellow  sufferer  with  you,  and  we  are  by  no  means  alone,  Mr. 
Little,  Mr.  Morehead  and  several  others  are  much  injured 
by  the  changes.  I  am  legislated  out  of  Orange  County  Court 
and  the  Superior  Court  of  this  county  will  sometimes  con- 
flict with  the  County  Court  of  Randolph  County. "- 

An  eminent  lawyer  who  was  admitted  to  the  bar  about  a 
decade  later  says :  "When  I  was  about  to  start  out  to  prac- 
tice law,  I  asked  the  advice  of  Judge  Mangum.  He  named 
the  courts  which  he  advised  me  to  attend.  'But,  Judge  Man- 
gum,'  said  I,  'the  oldest  lawyers  in  the  State  practice  in  those 
courts,  and  have  all  the  business.  And  I  have  neither  repu- 
tation, nor  friends,  nor  money.'  'No  matter,'  said  he,  'go 
where  there  is  business ;  do  not  fear  competition.  The  ex- 
amples of  these  great  men  are  just  what  you  need.  If  you 
want  to  find  tall  trees,  you  must  go  among  tall  trees.'  I  took 
his  advice  and  proved  its  wisdom.  I  was  soon  in  full  prac- 
tice ;  and  never  met  those  great  men  that  I  did  not  feel  a 
longing  to  be  like  them — Badger,  Nash,  Devereux,  Haywood, 
Graham,  Morehead,  Norwood,  Saunders,  Mangum,  Waddell, 
Gilliam,  Bryan,  Miller,  Iredell — an  abler  bar  than  that  of  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court,  as  I  have  heard  Mr.  Badger 
say."^  These  were  the  courts  in  the  northern  part  of  the 
state — the  old  Roanoke- Albemarle  and  adjacent  territory 
south  and  west.  If  to  this  list  one  adds  William  Gaston  of 
Newbern,  there  were  no  greater  lawyers  in  the  state,  in  the 
period  before  the  civil  war,  and  most  of  these  came  to  have 


^  Hon.  John  Kerr  in  memorial  oration,  26th  Feb.,  1867,  at  Wentworth, 
N.  C. 

2  The  Ruffin  Papers,  Hamilton,  Vol.   I,  p.  261. 

^  Hon.  Edwin  Godwin  Reade,  LL.D.,  of  Raleigh,  in  an  address  before  the 
North  Carolina  Bar  Association  on  July  9,  1884,  p.  12. 


80  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

a  national  reputation.  Morehead  was  recognized  by  these 
men  as  one  of  them,  probably  as  early  as  1825,  and  certainly 
was  recognized  as  one  of  them  by  the  profession  and  people 
at  large. 

It  was  in  this  latter  year  that  he  erected  the  residence 
on  an  elevation  in  the  midst  of  an  oak  grove  of  the  original 
forest  on  the  edge  of  Greensboro,  now  at  the  corner 
of  Washington  and  Edgworth  streets,  that  became 
famous  under  the  name  "Blandwood,"  whose  hospitality 
was  so  notable  that  "mine  host"  of  the  various  Greensboro 
inns  and  taverns  was  often  piqued  at  the  loss  of  what  might 
have  been  theirs.  By  the  close  of  this  year  in  the  new  home, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Morehead  had  two  children,  one  Letitia 
Harper  Morehead,  then  two  years  old,  while  the  second 
daughter,  Mary  Corinna,  was  born  on  November  27th  of 
that  year. 

They  had  been  but  a  few  months  in  "Blandwood,"  when 
the  people  of  Guilford  county,  in  August,  1826,  as  though 
taking  the  establishment  of  that  home  as  evidence  of  perma- 
nent citizenship,  elected  Mr.  Morehead  again  to  the  House  of 
Commons  at  Raleigh  during  the  following  summer.  There 
were  tive  candidates  for  the  two  places,  Morehead  receiving 
the  highest,  1125  votes,  and  Francis  L.  Simpson  867,  the 
three  others  falling  below  777 .  The  reason  for  this  w^as 
the  great  questions  that  were  to  come  up  before  the  Assem- 
bly, for  it  was  a  great  time.  The  rumblings  of  Jacksonism 
had  begun  to  be  heard,  and  North  Carolina's  attitude  at 
this  time  was  significant,  for  when  the  election  was  thrown 
in  the  national  House  of  Representatives  the  previous  year, 
she  was  one  of  the  four  states  which  voted  for  Crawford 
[Georgia,  North  Carolina,  Virginia  and  Delaware],  when 
seven  voted  for  Jackson  antl  thirteen  for  Adams. 

It  will  be  well  to  note  the  significance  of  this,  for  it  is  a 
complicated  matter,  and  of  great  moment  to  Mr.  Morehead 
and  his  constituency:  In  a  certain  sense  it  was  a  question 
of  slavery  and  the  Quakers'  objection  to  it.  This  denomina- 
tion had  petitioned  the  Fifth  Congress  against  slavery — the 
first  North  Carolina  petitioned  against  it ;  and  they  utilized 
it  again  and  again,  until  it  was  objected  to  when  John  Quincy 


y.  ^. 


o    u 

2-.    ^ 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  81 

Adams  defended  them.  They  had  exercised  manumission  so 
freely  that  the  large  element  of  free  negroes  was  by  some 
attributed  almost  wholly  to  them/  About  1800  a  state  law 
was  passed  that  no  negro  should  be  freed  except  a  bond  be 
given  that  he  should  leave  the  state.  By  1826  Quakers  in 
North  Carolina,  led  by  the  three  Quaker  counties  of 
Guilford,  Randolph  and  Chatham,  which  formed  one  dis- 
trict, decided  on  general  manumission  as  far  as  it  could  be 
effected.  On  May  30,  1826,  the  Raleigh  Register  an- 
nounced that  beside  64  already  sent  to  Ohio  and  58  to 
Liberia,  Dr.  George  Swaine,  of  Guilford  county,  had  charge 
of  over  500  more  to  be  shipped  out  of  the  state:  about  100 
to  Indiana  and  Ohio;  316  to  Liberia;  and  120  which  were 
to  embark  at  Beaufort  for  Hayti,  in  which  colored  repub- 
lic there  was  great  public  interest  as  well  as  some  apprehen- 
sion. It  was  this  subject  also  which  led  so  many  of  the 
Quakers  to  emigrate  to  Indiana  and  in  due  time  make  it  the 
greatest  Quaker  state  in  the  union. 

In  December,  1823,  the  western  party  in  the  Assembly 
tried  to  instruct  Congressmen  to  oppose  the  old  Jeffersonian 
caucus  method  of  nominating  President,  but  the  eastern 
members  rallied  and  secured  the  recommendation  of  Craw- 
ford to  the  people.  In  1824  the  Harrisburg  Convention 
nominated  Jackson  and  Massachusetts  had  offered  Adams, 
while  Kentucky  offered  Clay.  Thereupon  the  three  Quaker 
counties  of  North  Carolina,  above  mentioned,  held  a  meet- 
ing at  Greensboro  and  denounced  the  caucus,  and  endorsed 
their  old  defender,  Adams,  with  Jackson  as  second  choice. 
On  May  3,  1824,  Judge  Murphy  wrote :  'T  have  been  grati- 
fied at  the  prospects  of  General  Jackson's  friends  in  every 
county  in  my  circuit,  until  I  reached  Guilford.  That  county 
is  divided :  Mr.  Adams  has,  I  think  the  majority.  Mr.  Craw- 
ford has  the  next  greatest  number  of  friends.  Genl.  Jack- 
son has  no  active  friend  in  the  county,  except  Mr.  Morehead. 
I  do  not  therefore  calculate  much  on  Guilford."-    In  Novem- 


^  Brigadier  General  Jesse  Spaight  of  Greene  County,  in  a  good  speech  said 
Friends  were  responsible  for  the  element  of  free  negroes  that  were  a  source  of 
so  much  difficulty.     Raleigh  Register,  Jan.  26,  1827. 

-  The  Murphy  Papers,  Hoyt,  Vol.  I,  p.  297. 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  81 

Adams  defended  them.  They  had  exercised  manumission  so 
freely  that  the  large  element  of  free  negroes  was  by  some 
attributed  almost  wholly  to  them/  About  1800  a  state  law 
was  passed  that  no  negro  should  be  freed  except  a  bond  be 
given  that  he  should  leave  the  state.  By  1826  Quakers  in 
North  Carolina,  led  by  the  three  Quaker  counties  of 
Guilford,  Randolph  and  Chatham,  which  formed  one  dis- 
trict, decided  on  general  manumission  as  far  as  it  could  be 
effected.  On  May  30,  1826,  the  Raleigh  Register  an- 
nounced that  beside  64  already  sent  to  Ohio  and  58  to 
Liberia,  Dr.  George  Swaine,  of  Guilford  county,  had  charge 
of  over  500  more  to  be  shipped  out  of  the  state :  about  100 
to  Indiana  and  Ohio;  316  to  Liberia;  and  120  which  were 
to  embark  at  Beaufort  for  Hayti,  in  which  colored  repub- 
lic there  was  great  public  interest  as  well  as  some  apprehen- 
sion. It  was  this  subject  also  which  led  so  many  of  the 
Quakers  to  emigrate  to  Indiana  and  in  due  time  make  it  the 
greatest  Quaker  state  in  the  union. 

In  December,  1823,  the  western  party  in  the  Assembly 
tried  to  instruct  Congressmen  to  oppose  the  old  Jeffersonian 
caucus  method  of  nominating  President,  but  the  eastern 
members  rallied  and  secured  the  recommendation  of  Craw- 
ford to  the  people.  In  1824  the  Harrisburg  Convention 
nominated  Jackson  and  Massachusetts  had  offered  Adams, 
while  Kentucky  offered  Clay,  Thereupon  the  three  Quaker 
counties  of  North  Carolina,  above  mentioned,  held  a  meet- 
ing at  Greensboro  and  denounced  the  caucus,  and  endorsed 
their  old  defender,  Adams,  with  Jackson  as  second  choice. 
On  May  3,  1824,  Judge  Murphy  wrote:  'T  have  been  grati- 
fied at  the  prospects  of  General  Jackson's  friends  in  every 
county  in  my  circuit,  until  I  reached  Guilford.  That  county 
is  divided :  Mr.  Adams  has,  I  think  the  majority.  Mr.  Craw- 
ford has  the  next  greatest  number  of  friends.  Genl.  Jack- 
son has  no  active  friend  in  the  county,  except  Mr.  Morehead. 
I  do  not  therefore  calculate  much  on  Guilford."-    In  Novem- 


^  Brigadier  General  Jesse  Spaight  of  Greene  County,  in  a  good  speech  said 
Friends  were  responsible  for  the  element  of  free  negroes  that  were  a  source  of 
so  much  difficulty.     Raleigh  Register,  Jan.  26,  1827. 

-  The  Murphy  Papers,  Hoyt,  Vol.  I,  p.  297. 


82  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

ber,  however,  the  western  counties  were  for  Jackson,  "the 
People's"  candidate,  forty-two  of  them,  except  the  Quaker 
counties  and  home  of  Mr.  Morehead;  these  latter  finally 
joined  the  twenty-one  eastern  counties  in  voting  for  Craw- 
ford, in  hopes  of  throwing  the  contest  into  the  national 
House  of  Representatives  and  there  getting  their  favorite 
candidate,  Adams.  The  electoral  vote  of  the  State,  when 
given  on  December  1,  1824,  was  unanimous  for  Jackson ; 
but  when  it  was  up  before  the  national  House  of  Representa- 
tives, the  North  Carolina  Congressmen  voted  an  organization 
vote:  10  for  Crawford;  2  for  Jackson;  and  1,  the  member 
from  the  Quaker  district,  had  the  pleasure  of  voting  for  their 
favorite,  John  Quincy  Adams,  and  seeing  him  elected,  and 
the  old  organization  receive  a  stinging  rebuke.^  Thus  Mr. 
Morehead's  district,  in  which  Jackson,  his  own  candidate, 
was  second  choice,  voted  for  its  first  choice,  Adams ;  but  Mr. 
Morehead,  himself,  was  with  the  solid  west  against  the  east 
and  for  the  anti-organization  unsuccessful  candidate,  Gen- 
eral Andrew  Jackson,  who  was  also  the  Quakers'  second 
choice.  He  was  consequently  in  an  excellent  political  posi- 
tion and  a  recognized  power,  to  be  reckoned  with  when  he 
entered  the  Assembly  of  1826. 

With  this  personal  political  prestige,  however,  he  faced 
a  great  lethargy  among  the  eastern  people  regarding  internal 
improvement ;  they  had  transportation ;  it  was  the  west  that 
wanted  it,  but  they  had  not  the  political  power.  Then,  too, 
the  great  leader  of  the  internal  improvement  plans  for  river 
and  canal  transportation,  Judge  Archibald  Murphy,  had  lost 
prestige  through  his  financial  failure,  extending  even  to  a 
debtor's  prison.  A  few  leaders  were  becoming  thoughtful 
about  a  new  mode  of  transportation  that  was  gradually  be- 
coming more  and  more  a  subject  of  experiment  in  various 
parts  of  the  world.  This  was  a  mode  of  making  a  smooth 
road  on  two  wooden  or  iron  rails  laid  parallel — an  improve- 
ment on  the  old  plank  or  corduroy  roads  on  which  the  wood 
was  laid  crosswise,  instead  of  lengthwise.  It  had  been  used 
of  course  as  early  as  the  sixteenth  century,  and  wath  the 

1  State  Rights  and  Political  Parties  in  North  Carolina,  Henry  McGilbert 
Wagstaff,  Ph.D.,  p.  47. 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  83 

advance  in  iron  manufacture  by  1820,  malleable  iron  rails 
had  been  used  very  successfully  in  isolated  instances  in 
Great  Britain.  The  first  line  in  the  United  States  was  a  short 
quarry  one  near  what  is  now  Swarthmore,  Pennsylvania,  at 
the  Leiper  quarries,  in  1809 — a  quarry  still  in  operation. 
This  became  the  model  for  heavy  carrying  and  the  power 
was  the  horse  or  mule.  In  Great  Britain  some  success  was 
had  with  steam  engines  on  the  common  road  and  by  1814 
Stephenson  had  tried  such  an  engine  on  the  Killingworth 
tracks,  although  they  did  not  supersede  the  horse ;  but,  in 
1825,  the  year  before  Mr.  Morehead's  election  by  Guilford 
county,  a  success  was  made  on  the  Stockton  and  Darlington 
Railway  in  England,  who  had  then  about  twenty-eight  such 
small  "rail- ways ;"  but  the  idea  had  not  gained  much  ground 
in  America  except  the  tramroad  like  that  at  the  Leiper  quar- 
ries. The  earliest  note  of  a  considerable  extension  of  this 
idea  appeared  in  Philadelphia  during  the  winter  previous  to 
his  election :  "A  great  railroad  is  contemplated  from  Phila- 
delphia," says  the  Raleigh  Register  of  January  27,  1826,  "to 
Pittsburgh,  by  way  of  Lancaster,  York  and  Chambersburgh, 
a  distance  of  340  miles,  with  a  branch  from  the  neighborhood 
of  Gettysburg  to  Baltimore,  each  state  to  be  interested  in  pro- 
portion to  its  wealth  and  population,  to  be  effected  by  steam 
power.  It  is  calculated  that  a  cargo  of  seventy-five  tons 
might  be  carried  on  the  proposed  road,  at  the  rate  of  six 
miles  an  hour,  which  would  complete  the  journey  in  three 
days  and  three  nights !'"  This  was  Philadelphia  and  Balti- 
more's reply  to  the  success  of  Governor  Clinton's  Erie  Canal 
in  gaining  western  traffic  and  making  New  York  a  rival. 
Some  of  the  thoughtful  in  North  Carolina,  discouraged  by 
the  attitude  of  the  east  toward  river  improvement  began  to 
be  interested  in  the  new  method  of  two  parallel  rails,  with 
whatever  power,  and  Morehead  and  his  old  University  Presi- 
dent, Dr.  Joseph  Caldwell,  were  among  the  number,  though 
there  was  no  public  discussion  at  this  time. 

There  was  much  discussion  of  another  subject,  however: 
On  a  certain  occasion  during  the  previous  year  a  famous 

1  The  exclamation  point  represents  contemporary  astonishment,  although  it 
may  also  be  utilized  for  current  amusement 


84  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

American  said  in  an  address :  "It  is  said,  that  in  England, 
not  more  than  one  child  in  fifteen  possesses  the  means  of 
being  taught  to  read  and  write;  in  Wales,  one  in  twenty; 
in  France,  until  lately  when  some  improvement  has  been 
made,  not  more  than  one  in  thirty-five.  Now  it  is  hardly 
too  strong  to  say,  that  in  New  England,  every  child  possesses 
such  means.'"  This  was  published  to  pave  the  way  for 
the  reception  of  the  report  of  the  Public  Education  Com- 
mittee of  November,  1825,  composed,  among  others,  of  Chief 
Justice  Taylor  and  President  Joseph  Caldwell,  who  reported 
a  system  of  public  education  for  which  the  Literary  and 
School  Fund  was  founded.  Likewise  a  committee  on  in- 
vestigation of  method  of  caring  for  insane  and  defectives 
was  to  report. 

Closely  connected  with  and  underlying  all  of  them  was 
the  state  financial  system.  North  Carolina,  in  1804,  had  been 
among  those  states  that  feared  the  power  of  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States,  a  sentiment  that  led  to  the  refusal  of  the 
Jeffersonians  to  re-charter  it  in  181 1.  In  1804  North  Caro- 
lina had  established  two  state  banks,  one  at  her  largest  town, 
Newbern,  and  the  other  at  Wilmington,  then  known  as  the 
Cape  Fear.  In  1810  "The  State  Bank"  at  Raleigh  had  been 
chartered  with  the  expectation  that  these  two  banks  would 
become  branches,  but  in  1812  they  asked  to  be  left  inde- 
pendent and  enlarged,  and  in  1813  were.  The  State  Bank 
had  only  been  chartered  for  five  years ;  so  in  December, 
1825,  a  new  one  had  been  created  with  mother  bank  at 
Raleigh  and  branches  at  Edenton,  Tarboro,  Wilmington, 
Fayetteville,  Newbern  and  Salisbury.-  And  in  these  and 
the  two  old  banks  of  Newbern  and  Cape  Fear,  the  state  had 
5500  shares,  then  worth  about  half  a  million  and  yielding 
about  $60,000  a  year.  This  partial  state  ownership  was  like 
that  of  the  Banks  of  the  United  States  and  England ;  indeed 
the  custom  was  general,  only  about  three  states  having  it 


1  Daniel  Webster,  in  an  address  at  Plymouth,  in   1825. 

-Charles  Fisher  said  on  2nd  January,  1829,  that  the  State  Bank  was  or- 
ganized because  the  currency  was  then  composed  of  old  Proclaniation  bills  and 
Newbern  and  Cape  Fear  bank  notes,  and  as  the  former  were  legal  tender,  the 
latter  banks  would  use  them  to  pay  their  own  notes  and  so  avoid  paying  specie. 
The  State  Bank  .was  established  therefore  to  make  specie  possible,  as  neighbor- 
ing states  had  complained  of  the  action  of  the  two  eastern  banks. 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  85 

otherwise.  The  State  Bank  vs.  a  Bank  of  the  United  States 
was  coming  to  divide  North  Carolina  as  it  was  other  states ; 
and  this  was  a  part  of  the  whole  question  of  state  vs.  nation, 
or  state  fear  of  national  power,  complicated  by  needs  of  a 
national  currency  system.  The  tariff  of  1824  entered  into 
the  complication. 

These  were  the  great  subjects  that  confronted  Representa- 
tive Morehead  of  the  Quaker  district,  who  trained  with  Pres- 
byterians, whose  pastor  had  been  his  old  teacher,  Dr.  David 
Caldwell,    and    usually    attended    the    First    Presbyterian 
Church   of   Greensboro,   w^hen   it    was   organized    on    Oc- 
tober 3,  1824,  two  years  before.     The  Assembly  of  1826  was 
differently  organized  from  that  of  1821,  and  the  eastern  ma- 
jority put  John  Stanly  of  Newbern  into  the  Speaker's  chair. 
Mr.  Morehead's  old  chief,   Charles   Fisher,  of   Salisbury, 
was  there  as  before ;  but  the  mountains  furnished  the  great 
leader  of  the  session  in  David  L.  Swain  of  Buncombe,  his 
native  county.     He  had  received,  like  Morehead,   such  a 
private  education  that  he  was  able  to  enter  the  University 
in  the  Junior  class  in   1821.     Studying  law  under   Chief 
Justice  Taylor,  he  was  licensed  in  1822,  and  in  1825  was 
elected  to  the  House  of  Commons  and  contributed  much  to 
the  great  work  of  the  Assembly.     He  was  easily  chief  of  the 
Assembly  of  1826  also,  when  Mr.  Morehead  took  his  seat  on 
November  26th,  the  second  day  of  the  session.     Governor 
H.  G.  Burton  drew  their  attention  to  a  feature  of  internal 
improvement  calculated  to  increase  the  available  funds  of  the 
state,  namely,  the  drainage  and  reclamation  of  swamp  lands, 
which  was  destined  to  be  a  considerable  source  of  future  in- 
come to  North  Carolina.     The  Governor  also  laid  before 
them,  in  more  or  less  indignant  terms  some  resolutions  re- 
ceived from  the  State  of  Vermont.     It  seems  that  in  1824  the 
state  of  Ohio  had  proposed  to  Indiana  and  other  states,  and 
Indiana  had  approved  a  proposal  for  gradual  emancipation 
of  slaves,  somewhat  on  the  Pennsylvania  plan  of  1780 ;  that 
Georgia  had  countered  with  a  proposal  of  an  amendment  to 
the  Constitution  forbidding  the  importation  of  slaves  into  a 
state  contrary  to  its  own  laws;  and  that  Vermont  had  ex- 
pressed its  disapproval  of  it  and  willingness  to  cooperate 


86  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

with  a  proper  course  in  gradual  emancipation.  This  Gov- 
ernor Burton  submitted  to  the  Assembly  with  his  somewhat 
indignant  comments,  to  the  effect  that  North  Carolina  was 
well  aware  of  the  gravity  of  the  slave  problem,  quite  as  much 
as  states  that  had  no  such  problem.  It  should  be  added  that 
the  Ohio  proposal  differed  chiefly  from  that  of  Pennsylvania, 
in  providing  colonization  of  all  free  negroes. 

On  December  27th,  Mr  Morehead  was  again  put  on  the 
Committee  of  Education,  and  on  the  following  day  pro- 
posed a  Joint  Committee  on  Public  Buildings.  After  holi- 
days, on  January  2,  1827,  he  proposed  a  joint  committee  to 
act  on  the  Colonization  Society  memorial ;  and  two  days  later, 
with  leave,  presented  a  bill,  at  the  request  of  the  Quakers, 
providing  for  emancipation  of  slaves  under  certain  con- 
ditions. On  this  later  day,  however,  he  presented  one  of  his 
own,  namely,  a  bill  to  erect  Courts  of  Equity  to  be  held  in 
each  district  by  the  Supreme  Court  Judges,  taking  it  away 
from  the  Superior  Courts. 

On  January  5,  1827,  Representative  Morehead  had  occa- 
sion to  say  something  on  his  profession  of  the  law,  when  he 
advocated  a  bill  safeguarding  clients  of  lawyers  under  twen- 
ty-one years  of  age.  He  felt  "a  pride  in  belonging  to  the 
profession  of  the  law."  He  said  some  gentlemen  did  not  be- 
lieve that  there  existed  a  jealousy  of  the  law  but  he  "was  of 
a  different  opinion." 

On  the  8th,  he  was  among  those  who  advocated  the  legal 
date  of  beginning  the  legislative  session  as  the  second  Mon- 
day in  December.  On  the  13th,  Mr.  Morehead,  in  advo- 
cating the  bill  to  establish  Courts  of  Equity,  called  it  before 
committee  of  the  whole  and  spoke  at  great  length  upon  it, 
after  which  the  tragic  incident  occurred  of  Speaker  Stan- 
ly's sudden  attack  of  a  stroke  of  paralysis  covering  one  side 
of  his  body ;  and  the  consequent  appointment  of  General 
James  Iredell  as  Speaker  pro  tempore. 

Mr.  Morehead  was  very  active  during  this  session  and 
especially  on  this  subject.  He  spoke  at  great  length  on  the 
16th,  especially  in  behalf  of  necessity  for  such  courts  in  the 
Hillsboro  District.  He  said  that  "the  white  population  of 
the    Hillsboro    District    was    more    than    one-fourth    part 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  87 

of  the  whole  state.  The  whole  white  population  of  the  state 
being  419,200  and  that  of  Hillsboro  District  110,000;  that 
Newbern  and  Edenton  Districts  together  contained  less  than 
S4,000,  so  that  the  Hillsboro  District  contained  26,000 
more  than  both  of  them,  and  yet  each  of  the  Districts  were 
allowed  the  same  time  for  holding  their  courts  with  the 
Hillsboro  District."  He  also  said  that  the  Mountain  Cir- 
cuit contained  a  white  population  of  102,000;  so  that  the  two 
western  Judicial  Circuits  contain  upwards  of  5000  free  white 
persons  more  than  are  contained  in  the  other  four  Judicial 
Circuits ;  and  the  consequence  was,  from  the  business  neces- 
sarily arising  from  such  an  immense  population  that  no  time 
was  found  in  those  circuits  for  attending  to  Equity  cases." 
He  "thought  it  high  time  that  provisions  should  be  made  for 
the  relief  of  these  sections  of  country  at  least."  j\Ir.  Stanly 
retorted  that  "If  we  have  not  white  men  [in  the  east]  we 
have  negroes.  We  are  cursed  "with  them" — and  again  he  was 
attacked  by  the  same  kind  of  stroke  as  before.  The  commit- 
tee reported  it  inexpedient  to  pass  the  bill — which,  as  shall 
soon  appear,  was  merely  one  more  phenomenon  on  the  way 
to  revision  of  the  constitution,  in  the  contest  between  east 
and  west. 

Fortunately  a  complete  speech  of  Representative  More- 
head  at  this  time  has  been  preserved  and  well  illustrates 
the  vigor  and  ability  of  this  young  advocate  of  the  growing 
counties  of  the  west.  "Mr.  Chairman,"  said  he  the  next 
day,  "I  had  hoped,  Sir,  that  some  person  would  offer  to  the 
House  some  substantial  reasons  for  striking  out  the  second 
section  of  the  bill  [requiring  the  Equity  Courts  to  be  held  by 
Supreme  Court  judges]  ;  but  in  vain  have  I  w^aited  to  hear 
them.  Surely  no  gentleman  of  this  House  can  doubt  the 
great  necessity  of  adopting  some  plan  to  improve  the  Equity 
system  in  the  two  western  circuits ;  and  is  it  possible  that  this 
House  will  give  a  silent  vote  against  the  plan  proposed,  with- 
out giving  even  a  reason  for  that  vote,  or  without  suggest- 
ing some  other  plan  that  may  meet  the  views  of  the  House 
better  than  the  one  proposed  ?  Surely  not.  Sir.  That  griev- 
ances do  exist,  is  not  denied ;  that  they  shall  be  redressed, 
certainly  this  House  will  not  refuse.     When,  Sir,  I  arose 


88  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

before  on  this  subject,  I  acknowledged  the  bill  had  imper- 
fections, and  asked  the  assistance  of  the  House  to  bring  it  to 
perfection;  but  this  assistance  has  been  refused  me,  not  by  a 
positive  denial,  but  by  being  withheld. 

"It  was  said,  the  other  day,  by  the  gentleman  from  New- 
bern,  our  Honorable  Speaker  [Stanley],  whose  lamentable 
calamity  no  one  deplores  more  than  I  do,  Mr.  Chairman, 
that  the  white  population  of  the  different  circuits  had  been 
unjustly  taken  into  calculation,  without  any  reference  to  the 
great  number  of  negroes  in  the  eastern  circuits,  each  one  of 
which  may  form  a  separate  subject  of  litigation,  and  with- 
out any  reference  to  the  great  wealth  and  commerce  of  those 
circuits. 

"It  cannot  be  denied,  that  more  litigation  must  necessarily 
arise  among  a  population,  each  member  of  which  transacts 
all  the  common  concerns  of  life  for  himself,  and  appeals  to 
the  laws  of  his  country  for  his  protection  and  for  his  rights, 
than  can  arise  among  an  equal  population,  many  of  whom 
are  deprived  of  transacting  their  own  business,  and  rendered 
incapable  of  making  contracts,  and  w^hose  complaints  pass 
unheard,  and  wrongs  unredressed. 

"But,  Sir,  if  the  negro  population  is  to  be  taken  into  con- 
sideration on  this  question,  let  us  examine  the  subject,  and 
see  if  this  boasted  superiority  of  the  number  of  blacks  of 
the  East,  over  those  of  the  West,  does,  in  fact,  exist. 

"I  will  take  the  Newbern  circuit,  to  which  the  gentleman 
belongs,  and  compare  the  slave  population  of  that  circuit 
with  the  same  population  of  the  Hillsboro  circuit,  to  which 
I  belong.  From  the  census  of  1820,  the  slave  population  of 
the  Hillsboro  circuit  was  upwards  of  41,000,  and  that  of  the 
Newbern  circuit  only  about  29,000;  so  that  if  the  position  be 
granted,  'that  each  of  them  forms  a  separate  subject  of  liti- 
gation,' how  satisfactorily  does  this  comparison  show  that 
more  litigation  will  necessarily  arise  in  the  one  circuit  than 
in  the  other.  And  that  the  Hillsboro  circuit  should  have  more 
litigation  in  it,  than  the  Newbern  circuit,  is  still  better  ac- 
counted for,  by  a  comparison  of  the  free  white  and  slave 
population  of  each  circuit,  that  of  one  being  151,000,  while 
the  other  is  only  about  73,000,  a  dift'erence  of  78,000. 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  89 

"I  will  now  examine,  Mr.  Chairman,  the  relative  wealth 
and  commerce  of  the  two  circuits. 

"I  know  of  no  way  in  which  this  comparison  can  be 
better  made,  than  by  the  different  sums  which  the  treasury 
receives  from  each  circuit;  and  the  State  should  distribute 
her  favors  somewhat  in  proportion  to  the  bounty  she  re- 
ceives. 

"It  will  be  seen  from  the  Comptroller's  last  report,  that 
the  amount  of  taxes  and  money  received  of  Clerks  in  the 
Hillsboro  circuit  was  about  $16,000,  while  that  of  the  New- 
bern  circuit  was  about  $9000 ;  the  receipts  of  the  first  circuit 
being  nearly  double  that  of  the  latter. 

"So  that  if  we  take,  Mr.  Chairman,  white  population, 
black  population  and  taxation,  and  compare  them  in  every 
possible  variety,  as  the  criteria  by  which  we  may  judge  of 
the  number  of  law  suits  that  will  probably  arise,  we  must  all 
come  to  this  conclusion,  that  if  the  Newbern  circuit  requires 
a  Judge  a  certain  length  of  time  to  do  the  business  of  that 
circuit,  the  Hillsboro  circuit  must  require  the  same  Judge  a 
much  greater  length  of  time  to  do  the  business  of  that 
circuit.  We  are  told,  Mr.  Chairman,  that  the  dockets  even  in 
these  small  circuits  are  larger:  if  this  be  a  fact.  Sir,  is  there 
a  gentleman  in  this  House,  who  can  doubt  for  a  moment  the 
enormous  accumulation  of  business  on  our  Law  and  Equity 
dockets?  And  yet,  Sir,  is  the  relief  proposed  by  this  bill 
to  be  refused  us,  and  no  other  offered? 

"It  was  further  said  by  the  gentleman  from  Newbern, 
that  litigation  depended  much  on  the  habits  and  morality  of 
the  citizens ;  that  if  the  people  of  the  West  could  quit  their 
frauds  practiced  in  horse  swaps,  and  would  leave  oft'  coun- 
terfeiting bank  notes  and  passing  them,  that  then  the  dockets 
would  not  be  so  much  crowded  in  the  two  western  circuits. 
If,  Sir,  this  be  the  true  reason,  why  the  dockets  in  the  west- 
ern circuits  are  large,  then  is  there  the  greater  necessity  of 
having  justice  speedily  administered,  to  redress  those  frauds 
and  punish  those  offenders. 

"While  human  nature  remains  as  imperfect  as  it  now  is, 
we  may  expect  fraud  to  be  practiced  and  offenses  to  be  com- 
mitted ;  but  I  do  not  admit  that  more  frauds  and  offenses 


90  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

exist  in  the  western  part  of  the  State,  in  proportion  to  its 
population,  than  exist  in  other  parts  of  the  State. 

"If  we  examine  this  subject,  perhaps  we  shall  find  the 
reverse  of  this  to  be  true. 

"It  will  be  recollected  that  in  1821,  the  gentleman  from 
Newbern  himself  procured  an  act  to  be  passed,  authorizing 
a  Court  of  Oyer  and  Terminer  to  be  held  in  Newbern,  to 
try  the  various  offenders  who  could  not  be  tried  by  the  regu- 
lar terms  of  the  Superior  Court.  Whether  these  offenders 
were  persons  guilty  of  frauds,  perjuries,  counterfeiting  or 
passing  counterfeit  notes,  I  know  not ;  but  if  the  little  county 
of  Craven,  having  a  white  and  black  population  of  only 
about  13,000  persons,  cannot  punish  offenders  in  the  regular 
terms  of  the  Superior  Court,  but  requires  a  special  term  for 
no  other  purpose  but  to  punish  its  offenders ;  while  the  large 
counties  of  the  West,  some  of  them  containing  a  population 
of  upwards  of  24,000  have  never  yet  required  a  special  term 
to  punish  their  offenders,  we  must  conclude  that  there  is  as 
much  morality  in  the  West  as  theie  is  in  some  parts  of  the 
East.  And  this  charge  against  the  West  would  have  come 
with  as  much  propriety  from  any  other  quarter,  as  that 
from  which  it  was  made. 

"So  that,  no  matter  what  may  be  said  to  be  the  causes 
of  much  litigation  in  the  western  circuits,  every  person  who 
considers  the  situation  of  the  western  circuits,  must  be  satis- 
fied that  the  business  necessarily  accumulates  on  their  dock- 
ets from  the  diversified  transactions  of  such  an  immense 
population. 

"I  again  repeat,  Mr.  Chairman,  that  it  will  not  be  im- 
posing on  the  Judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  more  duties  than 
they  can  well  perform.  The  bill  has  already  been  amended 
by  striking  out  the  1st  and  5th  Circuits,  because  the  business 
of  their  courts  did  not  require  any  alteration.  The  2nd  cir- 
cuit can  not  require  this  court  any  more  than  either  of  the 
others ;  and  the  Supreme  Court  sitting  in  this  3rd  circuit  is 
sufficiently  convenient  to  try  all  Equity  suits  that  may  arise 
in  it;  so  that  one  of  these  Judges  can  hold  three  courts  in 
the  two  western  circuits  without  employing  much  of  his  time, 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  91 

and  this  time  would  be  employed  in  his  term  only  once  in 
eighteen  months. 

"If  this  plan  is  adopted,  the  business  of  the  Supreme 
Court  will  be  much  curtailed.  I  have  in  my  hand  a  state- 
ment of  the  Clerk  of  the  Supreme  Court,  by  which  it  ap- 
pears that  fifty-one  cases  have  been  sent  to  the  present  term 
of  the  Supreme  Court,  of  which  only  twenty-five  are  ap- 
peals ;  the  other  twenty-six  are  Equity  cases  that  have  been 
removed  to  this  Court,  because  they  could  not  be  heard  in 
the  court  below. 

"I  hope,  Mr.  Chairman,  the  committee  will  refuse  to 
strike  out  the  second  section  of  the  bill,  unless  some  gentle- 
man will  suggest  an  amendment  that  will  better  suit  the 
views  of  the  committee.'"  On  the  19th,  however,  it  was 
voted  "inexpedient"  86  to  36,  but  Mr.  Swain  secured  a  reso- 
lution asking  the  Judiciary  Committee  to  canvass  the  subject. 
The  episode  was  merely  another  phase  of  the  great  underly- 
ing constitutional  revision  contest. 

So  also  was  the  various  phases  of  the  negro  problem  more 
or  less  part  of  that  contest.  From  this  time  on  until  the 
end  of  the  session  it  came  up  in  one  way  or  another.  For 
example,  on  January  23,  1827,  a  bill  for  freeing  two  negroes 
was  before  the  House  and  Morehead  voted  for  it,  but  it  was 
lost  79  to  41,  nearly  two  to  one.  On  the  30th  he  fought  a 
bill  restricting  entry  of  free  negroes  into  the  state  and  with 
somewhat  the  same  results ;  but  on  February  2nd,  he  pre- 
sented by  request  a  memorial  on  the  subject  from  the 
Quaker  societies,  The  French  Benevolent  Associations  of 
Jamestown,  Springfield  and  Kennett,  which  was  promptly 
laid  on  the  table.  On  February  8th,  his  bill  for  emancipat- 
ing slaves  under  certain  conditions  was  finally  indefinitely 
postponed  59  to  53 ;  while  on  the  same  day  he  fought  hard  to 
indefinitely  postpone  a  bill  to  prohibit  trading  in  slaves,  ex- 
cept under  certain  conditions  named,  failing  42  to  64.  On 
the  ninth,  the  efforts  of  Judge  Murphy  in  his  desire  to  have 
the  history  of  North  Carolina  written,  came  to  action  when 
the  Hillsboro  Representative  made  a  motion  to  take  measures 

1  Raleigh  Register,  Feb.  2,  1827. 


92  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

to  secure  copies  of  colonial  records  from  London ;  and  the 
same  day  Mr.  Morehead  made  a  motion  to  grant  Judge  Mur- 
phy a  certain  amount  to  enable  him  to  write  a  History  of 
North  Carolina ;  but  it  was  promptly  laid  on  the  table  and  the 
next  day  he,  and  others,  secured  leave  of  absence  for  the  rest 
of  the  session. 

The  people  of  Guilford  county,  however,  sent  him  back 
again  by  their  election  of  the  summer  of  1827,  for  that 
summer  was  destined  to  be  a  turning  point  in  the  develop- 
ment of  North  Carolina  and  in  the  career  of  John  Motley 
Morehead.  But  before  that  occurred  Mr.  Morehead  at- 
tended commencement  at  the  University  at  Chapel  Hill, 
which  proved  to  be  a  most  remarkable  occasion  in  one  re- 
spect, namely,  that  eleven  lawyers,  in  one  block,  apphed  for 
the  Master's  degree  and  all  received  it,  among  them  being 
John  Motley  Morehead,  M.A.,  and  William  A.  Graham, 
M.A.,  two  young  men  who  were  destined  to  be  closely 
connected  in  the  coming  years."  About  the  same  date  a 
prophetic  proposal  was  made  by  a  distinguished  engineer 
and  architect  to  build  a  railway  down  the  Piedmont  1050 
miles  from  the  national  capital  to  New  Orleans,  which  was 
to  be  a  wood  rail  covered  with  iron  and  capable  of  provid- 
ing a  six  day  trip,  or  even  four  days  "under  pressure."^ 
Then,  shortly  after  Mr.  Morehead's  election  in  August,  at 
which  he  received  1603  votes  and  Mr.  Simpson  1290,  there 
began  to  appear  in  various  papers  of  the  state  a  series  of 
public  letters. 

These  were  headed  merely  '"Communications,"  the  first 
was  dated  September  1,  1827,  and  a  copy  appeared  in  the 
Raleigh  Register  of  September  7th,  and  was  signed  "Carle- 
ton,"  the  name  of  the  home  of  the  Prince  Regent  of  Great 
Britain,  "Carleton  House."  These  appeared  at  close  inter- 
vals to  the  number  of  twenty-two  and  the  author  spoke  of 
each  one  as  a  "Number."  They  were  afterwards  issued  in 
book  form  as  "The  Numbers  of  Carleton,"  and  had  great 
power  both  in  serial  and  in  volume  form.  Following  so 
closely  a  great  engineer's  proposal  of  what  has  since  become 

1  Raleigh  Register,  July  3,  1827. 
•Ibid.,  July  6,  1827. 


Ctommunication* 

TOn    THE    UALKICH    UEUISTEU. 


The  people  of  Niu-tli-Carolina  liavc  i;,. 
for  some  >-e;irs  pis'  »*\ii5ceU  a  (iispd.^uio], 
lo  facilitate  Hie  uioaii;^  of  cojumerciul  ia- 
tercMur^e,  boili  foreign  an<]  (lompsfjc.  Ir 
is  an  obj'-ct  in  whicii  they  iiave  felt  then  - 
selves  io  deeplj  infertsred,  that  no  3iu..,| 
>.ums  have  been  already  ex»<"n'l*»<|  f.r  i.^ 
accomplishment.  The  rivers  Yadkin,  Capi- 
Fear,  N-- use,  far  and  Roanoke,  all  witne  >« 
by  'he  work^  co;nmencfd,  and  t'le  Tiioniei 
dr>btjrsrd,  that  >uch  a  wish  has  been  allvfc 
ill  Ihe  }»ub!ic  loind  :  and  i^o  v. ell  kiiouK 
are  the  many  otht'i  altiv^tatioiis  of  i;,  that 
to  bf^)ar(»calar  id  llieir  etiusnfratioti  is  nri- 
necessary.  It  is  pr.»c>icai  protif  thit  tli,  • 
hive  been  deKj)ly  sensib'e  of  the  dii;adv;ii;"- 
i  lanes  of  tijeir  sifu^rion- nni!  t Nov  !■>-...,.  > — 


|^l)/<:Vt     4"  I      l«A-~     »      ••«      ••».v 


poshibic.     If  xve'"would  arrive  at  the  };re>i:- 
e*rj2;f*odVifourC<i]un;ry,  pprs'^nal  '»r  local  in- 
t  e  res '  V  »n  us  i'  ii  ot  6^;- 1  to)  she  n  u  oi^  ly  c  n  u  s  u  h 
ed,  aokbition  otuM  not  lie  %^^^^^  s-l- 

"'  fish,  bol  enllwhJenetl   and    welCdirectetl, 
a»id  »U^6iir'eflr.)rl9^nd  re8<  ai^^k.jnusi  b 
-f i i th fti lly  ^itftitf^  .i lite o » ly  tarn ecf * ni p o n    t h c 
,*disfuvery'tfh(I  esfablishincnt  of  the   iro'.h. 

•r»Cot>ld  4he  people  of  N.  Cafolina,  cou'd  riv>; 

j!;ovpr;i*i;|r,  niaj>is  r.ites-,  ie5;islat<)rs  and  olli- 

cers,  all  coocuraoon  these  principles,  who 

c  -n  doubt  <hat  hom  that  niooient  ^ju-  would 

e^ili  to  ijrow  conspicuoos!}    in  individual 

"|pioe^s>  and  in  strength  and  pro.spcMtv 

a  stale. 

t$     "  ■  .        CARLTON. 

^^  September  Isf.  \%9J 


First  Number  of  the  Carlton   Letters 
Afterwards  issued   as  Numbers  of   Carlton 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  93 

the  greatest  Piedmont  line  from  Washington  south,  it  was  a 
modest  proposal  compared  with  that,  for  it  proposed  a  simi- 
lar line  merely  from  Beaufort  Harbor  across  the  central 
part  of  the  whole  state  to  the  Tennessee  line.  It  was 
avowedly  presented  because  "a  vast  proportion  of  our  enter- 
prises for  internal  improvement  [by  water]  have  proved 
partially  or  totally  abortive.'"  It  was  therefore  a  substitute 
for  deep  waterways  and  canals,  precisely  like  the  one  pro- 
posed in  Pennsylvania,  where  he  had  once  lived,  and  rail- 
way projects,  which  he  had  seen  in  England  in  1825,  were  no 
longer  an  untried  thing.  For  the  author  of  these  public 
letters  was  none  other  than  President  Joseph  Caldwell  of  the 
University  of  North  Carolina,  whose  last  illness  was  upon 
him  about  the  time  he  closed  the  series.- 

In  these  letters,  he  shows  how  railway  experiments  have 
proven  them  superior  to  canals ;  and  by  railways  or  railroads, 
as  America  preferred  to  call  them,  he  meant  only  the  road, 
not  the  power,  for  both  horse  and  steam  power  were  in 
use  in  England,  but  only  horse  power  in  the  United  States. 
They  were  less  costly  than  canals,  and  far  more  reliable  the 
year  around;  and,  he  writes,  "It  is  continually  evinced  by 
present  practice,  that  steam  can  be  employed  in  transporta- 
tion by  a  railroad" — implying  if  one  should  desire  it,  for 
horse  power  was  the  one  in  mind  for  actual  use.  Indeed  he 
cites  instances  where  a  single  horse  "drew  sixteen  wagons, 
weighing  upwards  of  fifty-five  tons,  for  more  than  six  miles 
along  a  level  or  very  slightly  declining  part  of  the  railway." 
He  quotes  Engineer  Strickland  of  Philadelphia  on  the 
"locomotive,"  however,  as  an  actual  fact  in  England — a 
"gigantic  automaton,"  he  calls  it.  Then  he  takes  up  the 
cost  of  a  railway  commenced  at  Newbern,  extended  through 
Raleigh  through  the  center  of  the  state  to  Tennessee,  to  be 
built  in  seven  years,  which  would  require  but  $100,000  a 
year,  divided  equally  between  the  state  and  private  capital. 
He  defends  Beaufort  harbor  and  the  Harlow  canal  as 
terminals,  using  the  tremendous  growth  of  Rochester,  N.  Y., 
on  the  new  Erie  canal  as  an  illustration.     He  then  takes  up 

1  Numbers  of  Carleton,  1828,  p.   3. 

=  President  Caldwell   died  at  Chapel  Hill,  24th  January,   1835. 


94  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

branch  lines  to  all  centers  north  or  south  of  this  railroad, 
and  the  cost  of  operation  in  horses,  wagons  and  men,  and 
foresees  trade  with  all  the  world.  He  then  tells  what  a 
railroad  is,  in  detail,  making  much  of  the  Mauch  Chunk 
railroad  in  Pennsylvania  and  the  report  of  the  "Baltimore 
and  Ohio  Railroad  Company"  upon  it.  He  also  describes  a 
Fund  and  predicts  an  Atlantic  Coast  Line  from  Amboy, 
N.  J.,  to  Savanah;  and  warns  against  Norfolk's  efltorts  to 
get  all  North  Carolina  trade.  His  suggestion  that  one  might 
"breakfast  in  Raleigh,  dine  in  Newbern,  and  arrive  in  Beau- 
fort in  less  than  fifteen  hours,  including  all  requisite  delays" 
had  in  it  a  note  or  triumph.  He  thereupon  proposes  that  the 
next  Assembly  employ  an  engineer  to  canvass  a  route,  and 
the  people  to  call  for  a  Z7  cent  additional  poll  tax ;  and  there- 
upon quotes  engineering  authorities.  In  his  issue  of  No- 
vember 9th,  just  before  the  Legislature  convened,  he  again 
defends  Beaufort  harbor,  as  if  he  had  aroused  a  Wilmington 
hornet's  nest,  and  shows  the  harbor  to  be  only  26  miles  from, 
the  middle  point  of  the  coast  line.  As  this  was  his  last  num- 
ber until  spring,  attention  may  now  be  turned  to  the  Assem- 
bly and  Representative  John  Motley  Morehead's  activities 
in  it. 

Raleigh  capitol  witnessed  the  gathering  of  the  Solons 
on  November  19,  1827,  but  two  of  their  leaders  were  not 
present.  Indeed  this  was  not  a  House  of  a  dominant  single 
leader.  Morehead  was  the  equal  of  any  of  them  and 
was  no  longer  a  lieutenant  of  Fisher  of  Salisbury,  who  was 
present  again.  James  Iredell  of  Edenton  was  another  until 
he  was  chosen  Governor,  while  Newbern's  successor  to  Stan- 
ley, William  Gaston,  was  another  who  had  been  a  member  of 
both  houses  before.  Swain  had  not  been  returned.  Mr. 
Gaston  was  a  native  of  Newbern,  of  Huguenot  and  English 
stock,  his  mother  a  Roman  Catholic,  widowed  by  the  Revo- 
lution. He  was  educated  at  Georgetown,  D.  C,  up  to  his 
Junior  year  at  Princeton,  and,  graduating  with  high  honors, 
studied  law  under  Francis  Xavier  Martin.  He  succeeded  to 
the  business  of  (Chief  Justice)  John  Louis  Taylor,  his 
brother-in-law,  and  soon  entered  public  life  in  both  Assembly 
and  Congress,  where  young  Daniel  Webster  declared  him 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  95 

the  leader  in  the  War  Congress  of  1813.  He  therefore  came 
into  the  House  with  the  greatest  prestige  of  any  of  them, 
for  even  Chief  Justice  John  Marshall  was  to  avow  in  his 
old  age  that  if  he  was  assured  that  Gaston  would  succeed 
him  he  would  resign.  He  was  a  man  of  great  purity  of 
character,  and  was  greatly  beloved,  but  he  was  no  more  of 
a  leader  in  this  session  than  young  Morehead,  who  was 
nearly  twenty  years  his  junior. 

Mr.  Morehead  was  not  present  until  the  23rd,  but  he  had 
already  been  put  on  the  Standing  Committee  on  Education, 
and  on  that  day  was  also  added  to  the  Standing  Committee 
on  Judiciary,  which  was  a  most  important  one  this  session. 
On  the  26th  he  was  put  on  a  Committee  on  Amending  the 
Treasury  Laws,  one  on  connecting  Albemarle  Sound  and  the 
Ocean  and  one  for  a  survey  of  a  railroad  to  connect  the  Cape 
Fear  at  Fayetteville  with  the  upper  Yadkin  river,  on  the 
27th.  On  the  latter  day  he  himself  presented  a  bill  concern- 
ing bail  and  costs  which  was  referred  to  his  Judiciary  Com- 
mittee. On  the  29th  he  was  the  one  who  proposed  proceed- 
ing to  the  election  of  Governor,  and  he  and  others  made  sev- 
eral references  to  the  Judiciary  Committee.  The  previous 
efforts  at  gubernatorial  selection  having  failed,  Morehead 
and  Blackledge  joined  the  Senate  Committee  with  no  better 
success,  but  later  in  the  day,  December  5th,  James  Iredell 
was  made  Governor  and  on  the  following  day  Morehead 
was  one  of  the  committee  of  notification  and  arrangements. 
On  this  latter  day,  he  was  one  of  three  candidates  for 
Solicitor  General.  Judge  Murphy  had  written  Thomas 
Ruffin  that  Solicitor  General  Jones  had  resigned  on  Decem- 
ber 8th,  and  that  Morehead  was  talked  of.  R.  M.  Saunders 
had  also  written  that  the  "contest  would  be  between  Nash, 
Morehead  and  myself ;"  but  Morehead  did  not  get  it. 

The  month  of  December  saw  the  Guilford  representative 
very  active  and  aggressive.  On  the  1 1th  when  a  bill  came  up 
somewhat  inimical  to  Quakers,  Dunkards,  Mennonites  and 
Moravians,  he  fought  for  its  indefinite  postponement  suc- 
cessfully, 62  to  51.  On  the  following  day,  Brevard  and 
Morehead  were  appointed  on  the  joint  committee  to  arrange 
election  of  a  Public  or  State  Treasurer,  to  succeed  the  late 


96  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Treasurer  Haywood,  and  they  were  not  successful.  During 
the  month  an  unusual  number  of  references  of  bills  and 
resolutions  to  the  Judiciary  Committee  gave  occasion  for 
Morehead  to  represent  the  committee  in  reporting  almost 
invariable  rejection  of  them.'  On  the  14th,  the  Senate  re- 
quested a  joint  committee  on  establishment  of  a  penitentiary 
and  an  asylum  for  insane  and  idiots,  and  the  House  made 
Mr.  Morehead  chairman  of  their  section  of  it.  And  when 
someone  presented  a  bill  for  repeal  of  the  Common  School 
act  of  1825,  the  majority  sent  it  to  Morehead's  Standing 
Committee  on  Education,  where  they  knew  it  would  be 
properly  interred.  He  himself  presented  a  bill  providing  for 
widows  when  they  dissent  from  their  husband's  will,  and  also 
a  Guilford  county  bill,  while  he  secured  an  amendment  to 
one  protecting  securities.  On  the  27th  he  helped  vote  down 
an  appropriation  to  improve  the  Cape  Fear  below  Wilming- 
ton, but  voted  for  it  three  days  later.  He  also  favored  the 
creation  of  Macon  county  in  the  west  and  on  the  31st  had 
the  pleasure  of  reporting  out  rejection  of  the  repeal  bill  from 
the  Education  Committee,  which  killed  that  movement.  It 
became  plain  to  the  public  that  Mr.  Morehead  was  a  defender 
of  the  common  schools,  of  Quakers  and  like  bodies,  of 
widows,  of  defectives  and  insane,  of  slaves  and  free  negroes, 
the  West,  of  the  State's  history,  of  judicial  justice  and  exact 
legal  procedure. 

But  on  January  2nd,  they  were  to  learn  that  he  was  also 
committed  to  the  new  project  outlined  in  the  Carleton  Let- 
ters ;  for  on  that  day,  a  resolution  was  offered  requesting  the 
Governor  to  tell  the  Secretary  of  War  of  the  desire  of  the 
Legislature  that  a  corps  of  United  States  engineers  survey  a 
railroad  from  Newbern  to  Tennessee  through  Raleigh  and 
the  central  part  of  the  state;  and  when  it  was  read  an  im- 
mediate effort  was  made  to  postpone  it  indefinitely  and  it 
failed  58  to  46 ;  but  when  an  immediate  vote  on  passage  was 
taken  that  also  failed  but  by  only  so  narrow  a  margin  as  52 
to  50.  This  close  vote  was  largely  sectional  as  usual,  but  not 
so  much  so  as  most  sectional  votes.     Mr.  Morehead  was 

^  One  of  these  was  a  proposition  to  prevent  the  education  of  slaves. 


JoSEPTi   Caldwell 

From  engraving  by  John   Sartain  of  a  Bust  at  the 

University  of   North   Carolina 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  97 

among  the  58  which  procured  its  consideration,  and  was 
among  the  50  who  voted  for  its  passage.  This  showed  the 
influence  of  the  "Carleton"  Letters  and  also  both  a  growing 
recognition  of  the  probable  efficacy  of  the  new  mode  of  trans- 
portation as  well  as  discouragement  over  the  failure  of  the 
old  method,  so  far  as  North  Carolina  was  concerned. 

On  adjournment  on  the  7th  of  January,  1828,  Repre- 
sentative Morehead  returned  to  "Blandwood;"  but  during 
the  year  the  "Carleton"  papers  continued.  In  April  he  an- 
swered the  fear  that  the  very  facility  of  railways  would 
cause  influx  and  competition,  and  soon  followed  this  by  ex- 
amination of  cost  of  a  level  mile,  making  it  $2649.  Funds 
are  the  subject  of  his  next  and  his  May  numbers  enforce  the 
effect  it  will  have  on  union ;  and  shows  from  history  how 
commerce  grows.  "We  lay  like  a  man  of  strength  tied  hand 
and  foot,"  he  writes.  In  July  he  takes  up  the  action  of 
Maryland,  where,  on  July  4th,  ground  was  first  broken  for 
a  canal  connecting  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio — a  distance  of 
400  miles — and  also  the  first  blow  was  struck  for  construct- 
ing a  railway  for  the  same  purpose,  more  than  340  miles 
long.  South  Carolina  already  proposes  three  railroads  from 
Charleston,  namely,  to  Augusta,  Columbia,  and  Camden; 
while  the  Massachusetts  Assembly  have  just  taken  measures 
for  a  line  from  Boston  to  Albany.  Here  he  first  calls  it 
"The  Central  Railroad,"  of  North  Carolina.  Then  he  tells 
in  detail  the  history  of  railroad  development  up  to  that  time, 
and  closes  with  the  cry  of  Themistocles,  the  Athenian: 
"Aye,  strike  if  you  will,  but  Hear!" 

Thereupon  on  August  1,  1828,  at  Albright's,  in  Chatham 
county,  over  two  hundred  citizens  of  that  county,  Randolph, 
Guilford  and  Orange  met  and  appointed  a  committee  to 
formulate  and  issue  an  "Address"  to  the  people  of  the  State 
in  favor  of  "A  Central  Railroad."  Mr.  James  Mebane  was 
made  chairman.  The  address  shows  how  increased  popu- 
lation and  consequently  production  have  made  stagnation 
because  of  no  outlet  or  inlet  to  commerce ;  and  urges  popular 
meetings  over  the  state  to  further  the  idea,  and  especially  to 
ask  the  next  Assembly  to  make  an  experimental  railway 
from  the  market  house  in  Fayetteville  to  the  wharf  a  short 


98  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

distance  below  at  Campbellton,  the  port  of  Fayetteville,  head 
of  navigation  on  the  Cape  Fear.  Also  to  ask  the  Assembly 
to  provide  for  survey  of  "The  Central  Railroad."  This  "ad- 
dress" was  prepared  by  President  Caldwell  as  chairman  of 
a  committee  and  it  embodied  in  some  measure  the  thoughts 
of  his  main  address  before  this  meeting.  A  committee  of 
three  from  each  of  the  four  counties,  President  Caldwell, 
chairman,  was  appointed  to  carry  on  a  correspondence  and 
provide  promotion  of  the  aims  of  the  meeting.  The 
"Carleton"  papers  were  continued  during  the  fall,  appeal- 
ing to  the  farmers  and  avowing  "A  Central  Railroad"  to  be 
"The  Poor  Man's  Cause."  Mr.  Morehead  would  naturally 
have  been  in  this  meeting,  but,  if  so,  he  is  not  mentioned 
among  those  who  were  active  in  it.  Early  in  September  the 
Newbern  Spectator  announced  a  meeting  to  cooperate  with 
the  Chatham  meeting,  on  September  4th,  at  which  meeting 
William  Gaston  was  made  chairman  of  the  promotion  com- 
mittee. Even  the  Wilmington  Recorder  came  out  in  favor 
of  it  and  praised  the  essays  of  "Carleton."  And  on  Novem- 
ber 17th,  even  the  chief  executive.  Governor  James  Iredell, 
in  his  message,  favored  it;  and  in  doing  so,  made  probably 
the  most  concise  statement  of  the  heart  of  North  CaroHna's 
problems  that  has  been  made  : 

"There  are  three  great  outlets  to  the  ocean,"  he  writes 
to  the  Assembly,  "which  nature  seems  to  have  indicated  for 
this  State:  one  for  the  waters  of  the  Albemarle,  another 
for  the  waters  of  the  Pamptico  [later  Pamlico] ,  and  the  third 
for  the  Cape  Fear.  The  Albemarle  Sound,  in  length  about 
seventy  miles,  with  a  uniform  depth  of  not  less  than  twenty 
feet,  receiving  into  its  bosom,  besides  other  rivers  of  no  in- 
considerable importance,  the  Roanoke,  the  noblest  river  that 
traverses  our  State,  finds  its  communication  with  the  ocean 
impeded  by  a  sand  bar  not  eight  hundred  yards  in  width. 
All  the  produce  which  floats  on  its  waters,  after  coming 
within  sight  of  the  Atlantic,  must  seek  that  ocean  by  a  nar- 
row strait  into  Pamptico  Sound,  through  that  sound  a  dis- 
tance of  eighty  or  ninety  miles,  over  dangerous  shoals,  and 
through  the  Ocracock  [later  Ocracoke]  Inlet.  Nine-tenths 
of  the  navigation  of  that  part  of  the  State  (as  indeed  of 


OTHER  STATE  PROBLEMS  99 

every  other  part)   are  directed  to  New  York  as  the  best 
market;  and,  by  inspection  of  the  map,    it  will  be  seen  that, 
in  passing  through  Ocracock  Inlet  and  proceeding  to  New 
York,  a  vessel  descending  the  Albemarle,  must  sail  more 
than  one  hundred  miles  to  reach  a  point  on  the  coast,  not  five 
miles  distant  from  that  at  which  it  was  compelled  to  pass 
into  Pamptico  Sound.     The  importance  of  opening  a  direct 
communication  from  the  Albemarle  to  the  ocean,  cannot  be 
urged  in  a  more  forcible  manner  than  by  stating  the  extent 
of  territory  which  would  find  a  market  for  its  productions, 
and  a  diminished  price  of  transportation  through  the  chan- 
nel.    The  Roanoke  River  is  now  rendered  navigable   for 
bateaux  from  its  mouth  to  the  Blue  Ridge,  in  Virginia,  and 
to  Leaksville,  in  this  State.     In  both  States  its  branches  are 
susceptible  of  improvement  to  much  higher  points.     There 
is  perhaps  no  river  east  of  the  Mississippi,  which,  in  propor- 
tion to  its  extent,  washes  a  more  fertile  soil.     The  rich  pro- 
ductions of  its  adjacent  territory  have  become,  both  in  this 
State   and   in  Virginia,   almost   proverbial.     In   this   State 
alone,  at  least  eleven  counties  would  find  it  the  most  natural 
and  convenient  highway  to  market.     Add  to  these   eight 
counties,  through  which  flow  the  Chowan,  the  Casbie,  the 
Perquimans,  the  Pasquotank,  the  North,  the  Scuppernong, 
and  the  Aligator  Rivers,  each  of  a  depth  not  less  than  12  or 
15  feet,  which  convey  the  produce  of  a  highly  fertile  coun- 
try, and  which  contribute  to  form  or  to  swell  the  current  of 
the  Albemarle ;  and  you  will  see  that  the  agricultural  inter- 
ests of  nearly  one-third  of  the  State  is  deeply  concerned  in 
the  accomplishment  of  this  work.     .     .     ." 

He  then  speaks  of  the  shoal  which  was  the  greatest  im- 
pediment to  navigation  through  the  Ocracoke,  namely,  the 
"Swash"  and  government  experiments  at  running  it.  If 
this  failed,  a  ship  channel  to  unite  the  lower  part  of  Neuse 
River  with  Beaufort  Harbor,  "perhaps  the  most  commodious 
harbor  in  the  State,"  was  the  next  most  plausible  project. 
The  Neuse's  improvement  almost  up  to  Raleigh,  which  ren- 
dered a  bateau  navigation  safe  eight  or  nine  months  of  the 
year,  was  noted.  Cape  Fear  outlet  was  noted  next,  and  the 
fact  that  all  the  western  counties,  that  used  North  Carolina 


100  JOHN  IMOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

ports  at  all,  would  use  this  through  Fayetteville,  as  the 
highest  point  for  steamboat  navigation  nine  months  of  the 
year,  with  bateau  navigation  still  higher,  and  with  Wilming- 
ton as  its  port.  He  notes  that  the  shoals  below  Wilming- 
ton are  much  improved  and  will  soon  form  no  obstacle. 
He  advocated  port  perfection  first,  then  river  improvement ; 
then  roads  or  canals  from  western  counties  to  Fayetteville 
and  counties  connected  with  the  Roanoke  and  other  rivers. 
He  spoke  conservatively  of  "Railroads"  and  experiments 
with  them,  especially  the  latest  one  to  connect  the  Ohio  with 
Baltimore.  He  favored  a  similar  experiment  with  a  "Rail- 
way" from  Fayetteville  to  Campbellton,  a  landing  on  Cape 
Fear  River,  and  he  praised  the  "Carleton"  papers.^ 

But  if  Mr.  Morehead  was  not  active  in  these  prelimi- 
naries, it  was  because  he  was  engaged  in  a  far  larger  game, 
through  which  he  would  be  able,  in  due  time,  to  lift  the 
project  with  greater  power,  for  the  gentleman  from  Guil- 
ford was  then  an  Elector  for  General  Andrew  Jackson. 

^Raleigh  Register,  21st  November,  1828. 


VII 
Measures  for  Development 

AND 

Its  Organ,  a  New  Constitution 
1828 

On  December  3,  1828,  the  members  of  the  Electoral  Col- 
lege of  North  Carolina  met  in  the  Senate  Chamber  of  the 
old  brick  capitol  at  Raleigh.  There  were  fifteen  of  them, 
about  one-third  of  whom  were  venerable  men  with  three- 
score-and-ten  to  their  credit.  General  Mountfort  Stokes 
was  made  chairman,  and  Hon.  Willie  P.  Mangum  was 
probably  the  most  distinguished  among  them;  then  there 
were  Edward  P.  Dudley  of  Wilmington,  Richard  Dobbs 
Spaight,  Jr.,  both  eastern  men,  and  John  Motley  Morehead 
from  the  west.  Four  years  before  young  Morehead  had 
been  the  only  active  friend  of  General  Jackson  in  Guilford 
county,  and  the  east  had  been  against  this  "People's  Candi- 
date ;"  but  now  the  state  was  united  on  this  political  Lochin- 
var  out  of  the  West,  and  the  Guilford  county  elector  saw  his 
favorite  candidate  of  four  years  before  not  only  the  unani- 
mous choice  of  this  electoral  college,  but  of  that  of  the  nation 
as  well.  The  great  fact,  however,  was  that  the  east  had 
turned  and  followed  the  west  for  the  first  time,  in  both  state 
and  nation.  These  men  were  the  leaders  of  it  in  North 
Carolina.  Morehead  and  Spaight  conducted  the  balloting 
with  a  solid  vote  for  Jackson  and  Calhoun.  Indeed  the  state 
at  large  had  gone  overwhelmingly  for  the  North  Carolina 
lawyer  who  had  become  a  Tennessean ;  only  seven  counties 
in  the  whole  commonwealth  went  against  him  and  one  of 
these  was  Morehead's  own  county,  Guilford,  which  went 
almost  two  to  one  for  Adams,  the  greatest  majority  that  can- 
didate received. 

The  contest  had  been  a  fierce  one  all  over  the  land.  It 
was  a  period  of  breaking  up,  with  a  new  generation  coming 

101 


102  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

to  the  front.  "This  country,"  says  the  Raleigh  Register  of 
July  22,  1828,  "bids  fair  to  contain  as  many  parties  in  politics 
as  there  are  sects  in  religion.  Formerly  there  were  two 
national  creeds,  now  we  have  nearly  a  dozen;  and  as  they 
have  multiplied  so  fast  of  late,  it  is  impossible  to  predict 
how  many  there  may  be  a  few  years  hence."  The  feeling 
was  intense  also:  At  a  Jackson  barbecue  in  Pennsylvania, 
in  the  autumn,  a  toast  was  offered :  "John  Quincy  Adams — 
may  he  take  sick  on  Monday !  Send  for  the  Doctor  on  Tues- 
day !  !  Get  worse  on  Wednesday  !  !  !  No  better  on  Thurs- 
day !  !  !  !  Die  on  Friday  !  !  !  !  !  Be  buried  on  Satur- 
day !!!!!  !  And  go  to  Hell  on  Sunday  !!!!!!!"  The 
South  Carolinians  had  the  same  feeling,  but,  on  one  occasion, 
expressed  it  more  classically :  "Adams,  Clay  &  Co. — Would 
to  God  they  were  like  Jonah  in  the  whale's  belly ;  the  whale 
to  the  devil;  the  devil  in  hell;  and  the  doors  locked,  key 
lost  and  not  a  son  of  Vulcan  within  a  million  miles  to  make 
another!"  There  was  no  such  ebuUition  in  North  Carolina, 
for  the  revolution  there  had  been  so  overwhelming  that  the 
result  was  a  great  rebuke  to  the  State's  Congressmen  who 
had  nullified  the  vote  of  their  Electoral  College  of  four  years 
before.'  It  was  also  a  victory  for  the  western  part  of  the 
State  and  in  that  much  for  John  Motley  Morehead  of 
Greensboro;  and  it  was  prophetic  of  greater  changes  to 
come. 

Busy  as  Mr.  Morehead  was  in  his  profession,  his  mind 
teemed  with  all  sorts  of  development;  and  the  interest  in 
railroads,  which  President  Caldwell  in  his  "Carleton"  letters 
had  awakened,  was  accompanied  by  a  new  belief  in  manufac- 
tures. The  manufacture  of  cotton  into  yarn,  at  the  falls  of 
the  Tar  river,  was  the  oldest  factory,  and  it  had  recently 
shipped  twenty  bales  of  yarn,  according  to  the  Tarboro  Free 
Press.     Another  factory  was  at  Fayetteville,  head  of  navi- 

^  Hon.  Edwin  Godwin  Reade,  in  an  address  before  the  North  Carolina  Bar 
Association,  in  1884,  says  that  in  April,  1828,  two  lawj-ers  were  to  fight  a  dud 
because  one  of  them  had  reflected  on  the  character  of  Mrs.  President  Adams. 
The  bearer  of  the  challenge  was  told  his  principal  was  a  scoundrel  and  he 
himself  could  have  a  fight  if  he  wanted  it.  The  bearer  accepted  it,  but  was 
just  then  already  bound  over  to  keep  the  peace  in  another  matter,  and  this 
raised  the  question  whether  his  bond  would  be  forfeited  if  they  went  over  the 
state  boundary  to  fight  The  two  submitted  it  to  Mr.  Morehead  and  his  old 
Latin  preceptor,  Thomas  Settle,  and  in  a  written  opinion  they  said  it  would 
forfeit  the  bond.     The  belligerents  thereupon  subsided. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  103 

gation  on  the  Cape  Fear,  and  another  in  the  far  west  in 
Lincoln  county,  west  of  Charlotte.  On  October  14th,  the 
Greensboro  Patriot  gave  notice  of  a  meeting  to  organize 
manufacturing  and  to  apply  for  incorporation  of  a  new  mill ; 
while  on  November  8th,  a  like  meeting  was  held  at  Salis- 
bury, Rowan  county,  and  a  similar  one  for  both  cotton  and 
woolen  factories  in  the  adjoining  county  of  Iredell,  at  its 
Court  House,  on  the  17th.  They  cited  the  successful  opera- 
tion of  the  Tar  river  factory,  and  those  at  Fayetteville  and 
in  Lincoln  county.  This  had  been,  in  great  measure,  stimu- 
lated by  Charles  Fisher's  wool  report  of  January  1st,  previ- 
ously, in  which  he  had  shown  that  the  balance  of  trade  for 
several  years  had  been  so  greatly  against  North  Carolina, 
that  she  was  probably  810,000,000  behind.  Why  should  she 
buy  flour  in  the  north  ?  Why  buy  pork  in  New  York  ?  Or 
hogs  in  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  ?  Cotton  and  tobacco  were 
the  only  things  exported  from  the  west  part  of  the  state  and 
rice  and  naval  stores  all  from  the  seaboard.  The  introduc- 
tion of  the  manufacturing  systems  and  railroads,  of  course, 
was  the  remedy.  The  state  ships  80,000  bales  of  cotton  at 
$2,400,000,  which,  if  manufactured,  would  bring  $9,600,000! 
— a  gain  of  $7,200,000!  It  would  give  occupation,  arrest 
emigration,  and  build  towns  like  Lowell,  Mass.,  which,  six 
years  ago,  was  nothing  and  now  has  6000  population. 

John  Motley  Morehead  was  also  behind  this  public  agi- 
tation during  1828,  and  was  acting  personally,  too.  Leaks- 
ville,  near  his  old  home  in  Rockingham  county,  was  the  head 
of  bateau  navigation  on  the  Dan-Roanoke  and  he,  his  father 
and  brothers  owned  land  in  the  region.^  He  and  his  brother, 
Samuel,  established  a  big  combination  business  there  which 
developed  into  various  kinds  of  mills,  cotton  and  otherwise, 
general  merchandise  and  supplies  of  all  kinds.  He  later 
had  occasion  to  tell  the  people  the  relation  of  this  enter- 
prise to  his  temporary  retirement  from  public  life  in  1828: 
"The  very  extraordinary   support  which  you  gave  me   in 


1  This  land  was  first  acquired  by  his  father,  John  Morehead,  after  Leaks- 
ville  was  laid  out,  on  the  belief  that  this  town  would  become  the  head  of  Dan 
and  Roanoke  navigation  to  a  far  more  considerable  degree  than  it  ever  has. 
Spray  was  then  a  part  of  Leaksville.  It  was  this  investment,  it  is  said,  that 
finally  made  John  Morehead  fail. 


104  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

1827,  after  having  been  representative  in  1826,  was,  to  me, 
the  most  gratifying  evidence  of  your  approbation  of  the 
manner  in  which  I  had  discharged  the  duties  with  which 
your  kindness  had  entrusted  me.  My  removal  to  Greens- 
borough  to  settle  myself  among  you,  and  the  loss  of  my 
brother,  to  whose  care  I  had  entrusted,  almost  exclusively, 
the  management  of  a  considerable  mercantile  establishment, 
the  concerns  of  which  devolved  entirely  upon  me  after  his 
death,  rendered  it  extremely  inconvenient  for  me  to 
solicit  re-election  in  1828 ;  and  which  I  could  not  have 
accepted  without  a  personal  sacrifice  not  required  by  my 
friends,  and  which  my  opponents  had  no  right  to  demand."^ 
This  was  his  brother,  Samuel,  who  died  on  September  17, 

1828.  There  was  one  office,  however,  that,  a  few  months 
after  his  brother's  death,  Mr.  Morehead  did  accept.  His 
friends  had  put  him  up  for  this  office  once  before,  without 
success,  as  has  been  seen;  but  early  in  January,  after  the 
aged  Nathaniel  Macon  and  Archibald  R.  Ruffin  had  resigned 
as  Trustees  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina,  the  Assem- 
bly in  an  election  on  January  5,  1829,  selected  Mr.  More- 
head  first  among  five  new  trusteees.  Almost  ten  years  later, 
they  chose  his  brother,  James  Turner  Morehead  as  Trustee, 
also ;  and  the  two  served  together  for  nearly  thirty  years, 
while  John  Motley,  in  serving  the  rest  of  his  life,  was  des- 
tined to  aid  in  guiding  the  development  of  his  alma  mater 
for  but  a  dozen  years  less  than  a  half-century,  one  of  the 
longest  services  in  the  history  of  the  institution.  In  that 
long  period  he  served  with  such  distinguished  men  as  Archi- 
bald DeBow  Murphy,  William  Gaston,  Dr.  Joseph  Caldwell, 
Dr.  James  Mebane,  Dr.  McPheeters,  Governor  James  Ire- 
dell, Chief  Justice  Thomas  Ruffin,  Secretary  of  the  Navy 
George  E.  Badger,  Hon.  Willie  P.  Mangum,  Hon.  R.  M. 
Saunders,  Dr.  Francis  L.  Hawks,  Hon.  Thomas  Settle, 
President  David  L.  Swain,  Hon.  Wm.  A.  Graham,  Bar- 
tholomew F.  Moore,  Hon.  John  M.  Dick,  Gov.  D.  S.  Reid, 
and  many  others,  few  or  none  of  whom  served  so  long. 
Nor  was  he  a  figure-head  as  a  trustee,  but  for  nearly  forty 

^A  public  "address"  in  the  Greensboro  Patriot  of  July  11,  1832. 


The  Original   Cotton   Mill 
at  Spray,  N.  C. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  105 

years — over  thirty-eight,  to  be  exact — he  had  a  positive  in- 
fluence in  the  development  of  this  great  institution. 

All  of  the  general  activity  in  manufactures  and  banking 
in  1829  and  on  was  accompanied  by  activity  in  transporta- 
tion and  this  centered  to  a  remarkable  degree  about  the 
Roanoke  valley,  of  which  President  Caldwell  had  occasion 
to  say,  in  the  Senate  of  North  Carolina  late  in  1829,  while 
speaking  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  raiload  project,  and  the 
Georgetown  and  Ohio  canal:  "If  we  were  to  lay  our  hand 
upon  the  region  of  our  own  state,  the  brightest  for  affluence 
and  efficient  ability,  it  would  fall  upon  the  Roanoke  with  the 
portion  of  country  that  enjoys  its  privileges  and  prospects." 
And  when  during  March,  1829,  Delaware  voted  a  railroad 
from  New  Castle  on  the  Delaware  Bay  to  head  of  navi- 
gation on  Elk  river  at  the  head  of  the  Chesapeake,  when  in 
April  Baltimore  and  Ohio  engineers  returned  from  Europe 
announcing  that  steam  "locomotives"  were  built  that  could 
pull  up  a  grade  four  times  any  elevation  on  their  survey,  and 
that  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  railroad  was  to  be  built 
through  to  London  as  soon  as  Parliament  passed  an  act ; 
that  the  Baltimore  line  had  experimented  with  a  freight  car 
loaded  to  8260  pounds  that  one  man  moved  easily ;  and  that 
Massachusetts  had  in  June  authorized  railroad  construction 
across  the  state  west  and  to  Providence,  R.  L,  and  that  120 
tons  of  railroad  iron  had  just  arrived  in  Charleston,  S.  C, 
for  their  new  lines ;  that  with  the  completion  of  the  Dismal 
swamp  canal,  there  were  now  eight  vessels  on  the  line  be- 
tween Weldon,  at  the  Roanoke  rapids,  and  Norfolk — then 
it  was  that  a  Virginia  port  rival  to  Norfolk,  namely,  Peters- 
burg, on  the  Appomattox,  not  far  from  where  it  empties 
into  the  James — also  a  rival  to  Richmond — began  taking 
measures  to  tap  this  rich  Roanoke  valley,  not  with  canals, 
but  with  a  railroad,  and  a  survey  was  announced  late  in  Oc- 
tober, the  objective  also  being  Weldon.'     This  project  was 


1  Raleigh  Register,  3rd  November,  1829.  A  month  or  so  later  the  Liverpool 
and  Manchester  Railway  had  offered  £500  for  the  best  locomotive  and  the 
"Rocket"  won.  By  the  following  June  passengers  arrived  from  Baltimore  to 
Washington.  A  single  horse  drew  a  carriage  weighing  more  than  a  ton,  on 
which  were  28  persons  and  they  came  at  the  rate  of  15  miles  an  hour.  "This 
was  done,  too,  with  much  apparent  ease,  for  the  traces  did  not  seem  half  the 
time  to  be  strained  at  all."     Raleigh  Register,  3rd  June,  1830. 


106  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

destined  to  be  the  most  influential  event  in  the  transportation 
history  of  North  Carolina  as  well  as  Virginia ;  and  soon  led 
the  upper  Roanoke  to  demand  a  canal  around  the  rapids 
above  Weldon.  It  was  inaugurated  the  following  February. 
About  the  same  time,  October  28,  1829,  a  big  meeting  was 
also  held  in  Beaufort  to  further  the  project  of  a  ship  canal 
to  connect  its  harbor  with  the  Pamlico  and  so  with  the  Albe- 
marle and  Roanoke.^ 

Virginia  was  stirring  North  Carolina  vigorously  in  an- 
other way,  also,  for  the  conservative  eastern  counties,  which 
had  heretofore  quoted  the  Old  Dominion's  conservatism  in 
not  touching  their  constitution  of  1776,  could  do  so  no 
longer.  Agitation  had  begun  in  the  spring  and  in  April  the 
aged  Chief  Justice  Marshall  had  agreed  to  serve  in  the  con- 
vention, while  by  June  lists  of  delegates  were  published  and 
in  October  the  people  of  the  Old  North  State  began  to  read 
the  proceedings  of  the  convention  and  realize  that  the  old 
constitution  of  1776  in  their  sister  state  must  go.  Probably 
no  one  event  was  more  calculated  to  revive  the  old  east  and 
west  division  in  North  Carolina  over  revision  of  her  own 
fundamental  law.  President  Jackson's  election  might  con- 
solidate the  state  for  the  moment,  but  the  deep  purpose  of 
the  Piedmont  and  Mountains  to  have  proper  representa- 
tion was  not  to  be  denied  much  longer.  Indeed,  by  June, 
1830,  proposals  for  a  Convention  were  widely  discussed,  and 
the  Fayctteville  Observer  drew  attention  to  the  fact  that  this 
ought  not  to  be  an  east  and  west  division — let  it  be  as  it  was 
in  1787,  when  a  Warren  county  man  proposed  it  (Philemon 
Hawkins),  or  in  1788  when  a  Craven  county  representative, 
Richard  Dobbs  Spaight,  urged  it.^ 

This  agitation  was  reinforced  by  the  results  of  the  new 
census  of  1830,  which  showed  injustice  of  representation 
was  greatly  intensified.  The  seven  largest  counties  in  popu- 
lation were  all  western,  if  Wake  be  included,  and  she  often 


^  It  is  startling  to  most  readers  to  learn  that  North  Carolina  had  3100  In- 
dians within  her  borders  at  this  time,  out  of  the  312,300  in  the  United  States. 
New  York  had  still  more  and  Mississippi  had  most.  About  20,200  were  be- 
t\veen  the  Mississippi,  Illinois  and  the  Lakes;  94,300  between  the  Mississippi 
and  the  Rockies,  above  Missouri,  and  west  of  Arkansas  and  Louisiana;  20,000 
in  the  Rockies  and  80,000  west  of  them. 

^Raleigh  Register,  June  24,  1830. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  107 

was:  1.  Orange,  the  largest,  with  23,875;  2.  Lincoln; 
3.  Rowan;  4.  Wake;  5.  Mecklenburg;  6.  Granville;  and 
7.  Guilford — Mr.  Morehead's  county,  with  18,735.  Indeed, 
excepting  Halifax,  the  next  seven  largest  counties  were 
western,  too:  1.  Burke;  2.  Rutherford;  3.  Buncombe;  4. 
Stokes ;  5.  Iredell ;  6.  Chatham ;  7.  Caswell,  before  an  east- 
ern county  is  reached.  Furthermore,  omitting  Edgecombe, 
Craven  and  Northampton,  the  next  six  largest  are  also  west- 
ern: 1.  Cumberland;  2.  Surry;  3.  Anson;  4.  Davidson; 
5.  Rockingham ;  6.  Randolph.  Two  more,  out  of  36,  above 
10,000,  in  the  whole  64,  were  western.  The  increase  in 
population  for  the  decade  had  been  nearly  100,000  and 
mostly  in  the  west.  Newbern,  3796,  was  still  the  largest 
town,  and  Greensboro  came  up  to  562.  There  was  an  in- 
crease of  nearly  5000  in  free  negroes — nearly  20,000 — the 
greatest  number  being  in  Halifax,  the  other  counties  having 
more  than  500  each  being  Pasquotank,  Craven,  Hartford, 
Northampton,  Guilford,  Martin,  Surry,  Wake,  Granville, 
Cumberland,  Orange  and  Robeson.  Halifax  and  Granville 
had  the  most  slaves.^ 

The  public  mind  was  awakening  to  many  new  ideas :  The 
confining  of  capital  punishment  to  first  degree  murder  was 
one;  abolition  of  imprisonment  for  debt  was  another;  there 
was  wide-spread  organization  for  more  scientific  agriculture ; 
new  transportation  methods  have  already  been  noted ;  also 
manufacturing;  in  addition  to  these  came  mining;  silk  cul- 
ture was  also  advocated ;  the  advance  of  public  education 
was  not  the  least  of  these  agitations,  and  colonization  of 
negroes  was  an  earnest  theme.  The  tariff  of  1828  had 
already  brought  much  talk  of  nullification,  by  South  Caro- 
lina particularly,  but  North  Carolina  had  no  sympathy  with 
it.  This  so  incensed  the  Charleston  leaders  that  one  of  them 
succeeded  in  attaching  the  epithet  "Rip  Van  Winkle"  to  the 
"Old  North  State"  soon  after;  but  that  state  had  gone 
unanimously  for  President  Jackson  and  he  was  not  asleep  on 
nullification.     Indeed  the  North  Carolina  House  of  Com- 


^  By  January,   1831,   the  Quakers  had  freed   and   removed  652   slaves  with 
children  at  a  cost  of  about  $13,000. 


108  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

mons,  in  January,  1831,  passed  a  resolution  against  "this 
unhallowed  thing!" 

In  this  latter  Assembly,  fearing  a  fire  in  the  old  brick 
capitol,  provision  was  made  to  replace  the  shingle  roof  with 
tin;  and  when  the  change  was  being  carried  out  in  June, 
1831,  the  very  thing  feared,  which  tinners  were  at  work  with 
solder  to  prevent,  was,  on  Tuesday,  the  21st,  apparently 
caused  by  one  of  the  workmen,  and  the  old  brick  capitol  went 
up  in  flames,  destroying  the  famous  Canova  statue  of  Wash- 
ington in  the  rotunda.  This  comparatively  insignificant 
event  was  the  turning  point  in  the  development  of  North 
Carolina,  strange  as  that  may  seem;  and  it  was  because  it 
again  raised  the  question  of  location  of  the  state's  capital 
and  opened  a  Pandora's  box  of  rivalries  that  were  to  involve 
the  most  vital  questions  to  the  commonwealth.  For  Fayette- 
ville,  daughter  of  Wilmington,  on  the  Cape  Fear,  was  am- 
bitious to  be  mistress  of  the  state,  and  Wilmington  and  the 
Cape  Fear  valley  were  in  sympathy  with  it  and  the  West  saw 
in  it  a  mode  of  furthering  her  two  most  important  measures  : 
a  new  constitution  and  central  railroad.  The  former  once 
settled,  the  latter  would  follow.  The  feature  which  made 
this  possible  was  the  fact  that  the  capital  had  been  settled 
at  Raleigh  by  the  state  Ordinance  of  1788,  a  convention 
measure  and  hence  of  the  character  of  part  of  the  consti- 
tution, which  only  a  new  convention  could  change.  The 
matter  was  precipitated  in  the  Assembly  of  1831-32,  held  at 
Government  House,  or  the  executive  mansion,  at  the  foot  of 
Fayetteville  street  just  outside  of  Raleigh. 

The  beautiful  chess-like  game  was  as  follows :  First,  on 
November  25th,  Senator  Seawell,  of  Raleigh,  offered  a  bill 
to  rebuild  the  capitol  on  Unon  Square.  Then,  on  December 
8th,  Senator  Martin  of  Rockingham,  32  to  31,  got  it  post- 
poned a  year.  Next,  on  December  10,  1831,  Senator  Dis- 
hough  of  Onslow  county,  on  the  coast  below  Beaufort,  called 
for  a  joint  committee  to  consider  a  railroad  or  railroad  and 
canal  from  Old  Topsail  Inlet,  the  entrance  to  Beaufort  Har- 
bor, through  the  central  part  of  the  State  to  the  mountains, 
whereupon  it  was  amended  to  include  a  Fayetteville-Yadkin 
valley  road  and  one  from  Chatham,  southwest  to  Raleigh,  up 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  109 

to  the  Roanoke  to  join  the  Pettersburg  road  when  it  should 
be  completed.  These  were  assigned  to  the  joint  committee. 
On  December  16th,  James  Harper  of  Greene,  an  eastern 
county,  presented  a  bill  in  the  Commons  to  rebuild  the  capitol 
in  Union  Square,  Raleigh,  and  it  was  referred  to  the  commit- 
tee of  the  whole  House  on  the  21st.  On  this  latter  day  be- 
fore the  Commons  proceeded  to  the  capitol  matter,  William 
Gaston,  the  distinguished  Newbern  member,  reported  from 
the  joint  committee  bills  to  incorporate  the  "North  Carolina 
Central  Railroad  Company,"  Beaufort  harbor  to  Newbern, 
Raleigh  and  the  west,  and  the  Cape  Fear- Yadkin  Railroad. 
Immediately  thereafter  the  committee  of  the  whole  House 
began  consideration  of  the  rebuilding  of  the  capitol.  It  be- 
gan to  be  evident  that  the  West,  headed  by  Mr.  Morehead's 
old  district,  which  was  both  a  Cape  Fear  valley  and  a  West- 
ern district,  had  decided  to  hold  over  the  East  a  threat  to  join 
the  lower  Cape  Fear  Valley  and  remove  the  capitol  to 
Fayetteville,  unless  the  East  joined  the  West  in  securing  a 
new  constitution  and  a  central  railroad  from  Beaufort  har- 
bor. Even  on  the  8th  of  December,  Senator  Seawell  saw 
the  combination:  "Who,"  said  he,  "are  the  people  who 
find  fault  with  the  constitution?  The  people  of  the  West, 
who  want  more  power;  the  people  of  the  Cape  Fear,  who 
want  the  seat  of  government.  The  small  counties  on  the 
Cape  Fear,  with  a  black  population,  in  some  instances  greater 
than  the  white,  are  by  this  compromise  to  surrender  the  right 
of  representation  to  the  West,  provided  the  West  will  cede 
them  the  seat  of  government.  ...  I  perceive,  Sir,  by 
the  newspapers,  that  our  enterprising  brethren  of  the  West 
contemplate  the  project  of  a  railroad  from  the  back  country 
to  Old  Topsail  Inlet.  God  speed  their  undertaking  and  give 
it  success."  Senator  Toomer  of  Fayetteville,  answered  him : 
"The  scepter  is  passing  away  from  Judah,"  said  he,  "empire 
is  marching  westwardly ;  in  that  section  population  is  increas- 
ing. We  have  seen  the  grandeur  of  the  eastern,  and  enjoyed 
the  splendor  of  the  meridian  sun ;  we  must  now  admire  his 
beauty  in  the  west.  Fifty-five  years  have  devolved  since  the 
constitution  was  formed.  During  that  period  many  changes, 
moral,  political,  and  physical,  have  occurred  in  the  condition 


110  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

of  our  country,  and  the  character  of  our  people.     Yes,  a  new 
country  has  appeared,  and  a  new  population  has  arisen  in 
the  west."     So  when  it  came  up  in  the  Commons  on  the 
21st,  22nd,  and  23rd  of  December,  William  Gaston  made 
one  of  the  most  impassioned  pleas  of  his  life  for  it.     He  said 
there  were  but  13  smaller  Cape  Fear  valley  counties  of  the 
64  that  had  any  real  interest  in  it,  but  there  were  30  that 
abhorred  it  and  would  not  stand  for  it  in  the  end.    He  said  it 
was  being  done  by  a  dominant  Jackson  party,  upheld  by 
Crawford    adherents — another    political    combination.      He 
said  these  13  counties  were  selling  their  equality  of  represen- 
tation, their  birthright,  for  a  mess  of  pottage!     And  when 
he  finished,  the  battle  was  lost  to  those  who  wanted  the  new 
capitol — in  Raleigh — 68  to  65.     The  68  were :  from  Anson, 
2 ;  Ashe,  2 ;  Bladin,  2 ;  Brunswick,  2 ;  Buncombe,  2 ;  Burke, 
2;   Cabarrus,  2;   Caswell,   2;   Chatham,   2;   Columbus,  2; 
Cumberland,  2 ;  Davidson,  2 ;  Duplin,  1 ;  Guilford,  2 ;  Hay- 
wood, 2 ;  Iredell,  2 ;  Lincoln,  2 ;  Macon,  2 ;  Mecklenburg,  2  ; 
Montgomery,  2;  Moore,  2;  New  Hanover,  2;  Onslow,  1; 
Orange,  2;  Randolph,  2;  Richmond,  2;  Robeson,  2;  Rock- 
ingham, 2 ;  Rowan,  2 ;  Rutherford,  2 ;  Sampson,  2 ;  Stokes, 
2;   Surry,  2;   Wilkes,  2;   Wilmington,    1;   Fayetteville,    1. 
The  italicized  names  are  those  which  joined  Wilmington  and 
Fayetteville  for  the  West.     This  was  the  first  successful 
battle  of  the  West,  unless  the  Jackson  West's  capture  of  the 
Crawford  forces  could  be  called  the  first.     It  should  be  ob- 
served, however,  that  this  68-to-65  vote  was  merely  negative, 
so  far  as  capital  removal  was  concerned ;  and  that  Mr.  Gas- 
ton and  other  eastern  men  had  served  a  warning  on  Wil- 
mington and  the  lower  Cape  Fear  in  the  form  of  a  Beaufort 
harbor-Central  Railroad  Bill. 

It  was  now  to  be  a  struggle  between  the  Cape  Fear  and 
lower  Roanoke  for  the  favor  of  the  West,  which  boded  well 
for  both  a  new  constitution  and  a  Central  Railroad.  For 
the  West  had  said  merely  "The  capitol  question  is  still  open, 
so  far  as  the  Commons  is  concerned;  we  will  wait  and  see 
what  you  will  do."  Thereupon,  they  put  forth  further  oppor- 
tunity of  test,  when  Senator  Dick  of  Guilford  county,  on 
the  28th,  presented  a  preamble  and  resolutions  calling  for 


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MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  111 

the  election  of  a  Constitutional  Convention,  a  chief  feature 
of  which  was  practical  representation  according  to  popula- 
tion by  giving  the  largest  counties  four  votes  each  and  the 
rest  graduated  down  to  one  each  for  the  smallest.  Two 
days  later  the  Central  Railroad  bill  was  pushed  forward 
and  on  January  6,  1832,  the  main  bill  was  passed,  but  not  the 
completed  bill.  Thereupon  the  Senator  from  Granville,  on 
the  9th,  tried  to  reintroduce  the  capitol  bill  and,  after  a  fight 
that  lasted  to  the  11th,  it  was  ruled  out  by  but  one  vote,  re- 
maining postponed  until  next  Assembly.  This  was  the  West's 
notification  that  the  capitol  question  must  await  the  out- 
come of  the  convention  question ;  and  it  was  well  they  did  so, 
for  on  January  4,  1832,  Senator  Louis  D.  Wilson  of  Edge- 
combe made  a  determined  effort  to  have  it  postponed  in- 
definitely and  succeeded  by  a  vote  of  42  to  21.  So  both 
capitol  and  convention  were  postponed  for  another  year, 
and  the  honors  were  even,  between  the  east  and  the  west, 
with  the  West  in  possession  of  her  railroad  bills.' 

A  curious  feature  of  the  situation,  however,  was  the  fact 
that  Raleigh's  friends,  so  confident  of  keeping  the  capital, 
had  anticipated  the  Fayetteville-Campbellton  "Experimental 
Railroad"  of  a  mile  or  so,  and  in  February,  1830,  had  se- 
cured incorporation  of  their  own  "Experimental  Railroad," 
designing  to  run  it  from  capitol  or  "Union  Square"  to  the 
quarry,  a  mile  or  so  southeastward,  to  also  haul  stone  for 
the  new  capitol,  when  it  should  be  ordered.  It  went  east- 
ward from  the  capitol,  on  Newbern,  to  Bloodworth,  then 
south  to  East  Hargett,  then  east  to  Tarboro  and  south 
again  to  the  quarry.  All  railroads  were  "experimental" 
ones ;  but  by  "experimental"  they  meant  not  only  mechanical 
experiment,  but  psychological  and  political  experiment. 
They  proposed  to  have  not  merely  a  railroad  track  and 
freight  wagons,  but  "handsome  cars  on  it  for  such  ladies 
and  gentlemen  as  may  desire  to  take  the  exercise  of 
a  Railroad  airing,"  a   feature  that  was  accomplished  not 


1  The  year  1831  was  characterized  by  slave  insurrection  to  an  unusual  de- 
gree. In  August  there  was  one  in  Virginia  and  in  September  one  in  the 
counties  of  Duplin,  Sampson,  and  others  near  Wilmington  were  nipped  in  the 
bud.  These  followed  one  in  Charleston  that  was  apparently  started  by  Haytian 
negroes. 


112  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

many  months  later/  This  feature  was  designed  to  convince 
Solons  and  other  North  Carolina  visitors  to  the  capital,  by 
actual  experience  with  a  railroad,  w^iat  a  good  thing  the 
North  Carolina  Central  Railroad  would  be ;  for  the  progress 
of  the  Petersburg  and  Roanoke  Railroad  toward  the  Roa- 
noke valley,  and  the  effect  it  was  having  on  the  shipments 
from  the  Roanoke,  even  before  it  reached  there,  was  causing 
intense  thought  on  the  subject  in  the  southern  part  of  the 
state  and  in  Wilmington  especially.  Before  the  close  of  1832 
Halifax  was  saying  she  was  getting  goods  and  shipping  them 
much  quicker,  even  though  it  was  only  30  miles  from 
Petersburg,  and  a  good  way  from  the  Roanoke,  yet. 

In  view  of  these  things,  it  is  not  strange  that  John  Mot- 
ley Morehead's  motto,  Quiescere  non  Possum,  should  be- 
come acutely  active  in  his  consciousness,  for  by  the  time 
"The  Experimental  Railroad"  was  organized  in  July,  1832, 
the  friends  of  President  Jackson  had  nominated  him  for 
Presidential  Elector  again.  Of  this  The  Greenshoroiigh 
Patriot  of  July  11,  1832,  says  of  the  Jackson  connection  in 
that  place,  after  coming  out  for  that  ticket,  "then  for 
dulcifying  the  pill  which  the  Divil  would  hate  to  swallow, 
without  something  to  give  it  a  relish,  'a  member'  very  gravely 
asserts  that  John  M.  Morehead,  Esq.,  stands  pledged  to  sup- 
port the  above  ticket.  If  this  pledge  was  given  at  all,  it 
must  have  been  given  in  confidence,  to  'the  member'  alone, 
for  we  never  heard  such  a  thing  in  these  Capes !  It  is  true, 
the  gentleman  in  question  has  been  nominated  by  the  friends 
of  the  present  administration,  as  an  elector  on  the  Jackson 
ticket;  but  Van  Buren  was  never  named,  and  only  remem- 
bered to  be  depised,  in  the  several  meetings  which  made 
and  sustained  the  nomination.  Mr.  Morehead  is  properly 
pledged  to  support  the  Jackson  ticket,  if  chosen  as  an  elec- 
tor; but  who  ever  authorized  'the  member'  to  cram  Van 
Buren  down  his  throat?" 


1  Raleigh  Register,  2Sth  December,  1832.  The  first  meeting  of  stockholders 
was  on  June  29,  1832,  and  the  organization  took  place  at  the  Raleigh  Court 
House  on  July  6th,  with  Joseph  Gales  as  President  By  September  10th,  their 
iron  rails  were  at  Petersburg  and  by  January,  1833,  the  road  was  finished,  and 
possessed  two  cars  and  three  horses.  Minutes  of  the  Managers'  Board,  His- 
torical Commission,  Raleigh. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  113 

On  the  same  day  as  the  above,  Mr.  Morehead  issued  a 
"Circular  to  the  Freemen  of  Guilford  County,"  in  which  he 
says:  "Fellow  Citizens:  The  very  extraordinary  support 
which  you  gave  me  in  1827,  after  having  been  your  repre- 
sentative in  1826,  was,  to  me,  the  most  gratifying  evidence 
of  your  approbation  of  the  manner  in  which  I  had  dis- 
charged the  duties  with  which  your  kindness  had 
entrusted  me. 

"My  removal  to  Greensborough  to  settle  myself  perma- 
nently among  you,  and  the  loss  of  my  brother,  to  whose  care 
I  had  entrusted,  almost  exclusively,  the  management  of  a 
considerable  mercantile  establishment,  the  concerns  of  which 
devolved  entirely  upon  me  after  his  death,  rendered  it  ex- 
tremely inconvenient  for  me  to  solicit  a  re-election  in  1828; 
and  which  I  could  not  have  accepted  without  a  personal  sac- 
rifice not  required  by  my  friends,  and  which  my  opponents 
had  no  right  to  demand. 

"Our  late  worthy  Senator  having  declined  a  re-election, 
I  became  a  candidate  to  represent  you  in  the  next  Senate. 
I  was  induced  to  do  so  for  diverse  reasons : — Our  next  legis- 
lature will  be  a  very  important  one ; — Matters  in  which  the 
state  and  yourselves  have  the  deepest  interest,  will,  no  doubt, 
be  agitated.  The  subject  of  holding  a  convention,  to  revise 
and  amend  our  constitution,  and  remove  the  seat  of  govern- 
ment, if  it  shall  be  the  people's  will;  the  establishment  of  a 
bank,  by  which  the  interest  of  the  state  and  her  citizens  shall 
be  advanced  and  secured,  and  a  sound  and  sufficient  cur- 
rency, now  so  much  needed,  be  afforded  for  all  commercial 
purposes ; — Investments  in  railroads,  on  a  plan,  wild  and  ex- 
travagant, or  prudent,  economical  and  judicious;  and  an 
appropriation  for  rebuilding  your  capitol ;  and  diverse  other 
matters  of  equal  or  minor  importance. 

"You  who  pay  the  least  attention  to  the  interests  of  our 
State,  know  that  the  next  session  will  present  an  important 
crisis  in  our  affairs.  And  you  must  be  satisfied  that  at  no 
time,  has  it  been  more  desirable  that  the  West  should  send 
to  our  next  legislature  the  whole  force  of  her  moral  and 
intellectual  strength.  And  it  is  to  be  lamented  that  some 
of  the  most  efficient,  able  and  distinguished  members  of  the 


114  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

>last  session,  from  the  West,  are  not  before  the  people  for  a 
re-election. 

"Some  of  you,  my  fellow  citizens,  as  well  as  some  other 
citizens  of  the  state,  were  kind  enough  to  signify  to  me  the 
favorable  opinion  that  I  could  be  of  service  to  my  country 
and  state  in  the  next  legislature,  and  that  I  would  in  some 
degree,  add  to  the  weight  and  character  of  the  Western  rep- 
resentation. This  favorable  expression  was  accompanied 
with  a  request  that  I  would  tender  my  services  to  the  people. 
Believing  it  the  duty  of  every  citizen  to  render  service  when- 
ever required,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  to  tender  you  my 
services,  however  much  it  might  be  against  my  inclinations 
and  interests,  if  no  other  citizen  should  do  so. 

"At  May  term  of  your  court,  having  understood  that  it 
was  probable  Jonathan  Parker  and  Francis  L.  Simpson, 
Esqrs.,  would  be  candidates  in  the  Senate,  I  applied  in 
person  to  Mr.  Simpson,  between  whom  and  myself  the  most 
friendly  relations  have  existed  from  our  first  acquaintance, 
to  know  whether  he  had  any  such  designs,  at  the  same  time 
assuring  him  of  my  determination  not  to  become  a  candi- 
date, if  any  other  person  of  respectability  did  so.  Mr. 
Simpson  replied,  that  he  was  determined  Mr.  Parker  should 
have  opposition  if  he  became  a  candidate ;  and  that  he  would 
oppose  him  unless  I  would  do  so.  I  again  stated  to  Mr. 
Simpson  that  I  was  determined  not  to  become  a  candidate, 
if  himself,  Mr.  Parker,  or  any  other  respectable  citizen  chose 
to  do  so — as  I  was  determined  to  have  no  contest  with  any 
person.  To  this  Mr.  Simpson  replied,  that  the  friendly  re- 
lations which  had  existed  between  us  forbade  our  oppo- 
sition; and  he  was  kind  enough  to  say,  that  my  becoming 
a  candidate  met  his  entire  approbation.  He  also  assured  me 
in  the  most  positive  and  unequivocal  terms,  that  he  would 
not  become  a  candidate  for  the  Senate  if  I  would  tender  my 
services.  I  thanked  him  for  his  renewed  but  not  unexpected 
evidence  of  his  friendship,  and  assured  him  that  I  should 
become  a  candidate,  if  Mr.  Parker,  or  some  other  citizen 
did  not. 

"Not  until  Friday  of  the  same  court,  did  I  know  certainly 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  115 

that  Mr.  Parker  would  not  offer;  and  no  other  citizen  com- 
ing forward  on  that  day,  I  tendered  you  my  services. 

"And  I  assure  you,  fellow  citizens,  that  I  should  have 
been  again  proud  to  represent  the  intelligent  freemen  of 
Guilford,  if  it  had  met  their  approbation — if  I  would  have 
done  so  with  honor  to  myself  and  usefulness  to  them.  And 
as  an  earnest  of  the  future,  I  would  have  referred  you  to  past 
services  I  have  rendered  you.  During  the  two  sessions  I  had 
the  honor  to  represent  you,  I  have  not  heard  the  first  com- 
plaint ;  and  I  was  not,  during  that  time,  a  mere  cypher, 
counting  only  when  on  the  right  of  a  figure! 

"Scarcely  had  my  name  been  announced,  when  the  ever 
busy  tongue  of  slander  commenced  its  worthy  work.  The 
public  ear  was  filled  with  suspicions,  jealousies  and  slanders, 
the  most  ridiculous  and  unfounded.  And  there  were  some, 
whose  good  opinion  I  desire  and  respect,  affected  to  give 
some  credence. 

"In  all  communities  there  will  be  a  noisy  herd,  who  utter 
a  senseless  clamour  and  gladly  listen  to,  and  circulate  every- 
thing that  is  destructive  of  a  neighbor's  character.  If  I  had 
found  the  opposition  to  me  confined  to  this  class,  I  should 
certainly  have  disregarded  it;  but  when  I  find  those,  whose 
good  opinion  I  esteem,  attributing  to  me  unworthy  and  un- 
founded motives  for  tendering  to  them  my  services,  and, 
instead  of  giving  me  their  support,  pursuing  me  with  jealous 
suspicions — I  have  for  them,  too  much  regard,  to  any  longer 
trouble  and  disquiet  them. 

"I  desire  to  render  services  to  my  state,  and  the  honor 
of  representing  the  freemen  of  Guilford,  is,  and  will  be  at 
all  times,  to  me,  a  sufficient  motive  to  tender  them  my  ser- 
vices, whenever  I  may  deem  them  acceptable.  And  I  shall 
deplore  the  condition  of  our  common  country,  when  the 
feelings  of  patriotism  shall  become  so  far  extinguished,  as 
not  to  be  a  sufficient  inducement  to  serve  the  public — and 
when,  to  receive  the  suffrages  of  freemen,  shall  cease  to  be 
an  honor. 

"I  find  myself  unexpectedly  opposed  by  Mr.  Francis  L. 
Simpson.  This  is  an  opposition  which  no  man  could  have 
anticipated  after  what  had  passed  between  us   unless   he 


116  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

were  much  better  acquainted  with  Mr.  Simpson,  than  I  con- 
fess I  was! 

"Whether  the  idle  clamours  against  me  have  offered 
him  temptations  he  could  not  resist;  whether  a  fickle 
disposition  could  not  bear  the  yoke  an  honorable  pledge  had 
imposed ;  or  whether  an  anxiety  to  play  the  bravo,  flourish 
the  candidate  a  few  days  and  then  retire,  as  on  a  former 
occasion — has  been  the  cause  of  his  course,  I  know  not. 

"But  whatever  the  cause  may  be,  I  sincerely  regret  it ; — 
not  that  I  could  have  anything  to  fear  from  such  a  contest. 
The  language  which  you  have  heretofore  spoken  through 
your  ballot-box,  to  both  of  us,  when  canvassing  for  the 
same  seat,  was  too  intelligible  for  the  most  consummate 
vanity  to  misunderstand.  And  even  if  anything  was  to  have 
been  apprehended,  in  a  fair  and  honorable  contest — now, 
that  apprehension  would  be  certainly  removed ! 

"The  same  busy  tongue  which  has  traduced  me,  and 
abused  you,  will  attribute  my  withdrawal  to  an  apprehension 
of  the  result  of  the  contest.  Can  you  expect  anything  else 
from  that  mind,  in  which  a  noble  emotion  never  arose — in 
which  a  generous  sentiment,  a  disinterested  motive,  honest 
candour,  or  veracity  has  no  abiding  place? 

'T  stated  to  you,  my  fellow  citizens,  in  my  first  declara- 
tion, that  I  wished  not  to  have  a  contest  for  the  place — I  am 
still  determined  to  have  none ;  and  beg  you  to  consider  me  no 
longer  a  candidate  before  you. 

"To  have  been  your  representative  by  a  respectable  ma- 
jority; and  yet  to  have  been  opposed  and  suspected  by  an 
honorable  minority,  would  have  rendered  my  seat  unpleas- 
ant, particularly  at  a  time  when  every  Western  representa- 
tive should  be  untrammelled ;  and  should  unite  all  our  intel- 
lectual energies  and  strength  for  the  advancement  of  our 
common  good. 

"A  seat  in  the  legislature  is  pleasant  to  him  who  is  con- 
tent to  obtain  it  by  any  and  every  means,  however  degrad- 
ing or  unjustifiable — who  is  content  to  screw  himself  into 
some  obscure  corner  of  the  legislative  hall,  equally  incapable 
of  originating  or  sustaining  any  great  and  useful  public 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  117 

measure,  and  from  his  snug  retreat,  to  cry  'Aye'  or  'No'  to 
every  question  put,  regardless  of  the  propriety  of  the  vote  he 
is  giving — but  regarding  strictly  how  he  thinks  it  will  go 
down  at  home; —  who  draws  his  pay — chuckles  over  it — 
returns  home — and  tells  what  wonders  'we  have  done!' — but 
never  tells  that  stubborn  truth : — 7  got  my  pay,  but  I  did  not 
earn  it!' 

"Far  different  are  the  feelings  of  that  honorable  member 
who  takes  his  seat,  deeply  impressed  with  the  magnitude  of 
the  responsibility  he  has  assumed — who  reflects,  under  the 
obligations  of  an  oath,  that  he  is  legislating  upon  the  lives, 
the  liberties  and  fortunes  of  his  fellow  men ;  and  that  after 
ages  may  be  affected  by  an  error  in  his  course — who  votes 
for  the  public  good,  regardless  of  popular  clamour,  returns 
among  his  constituents,  convinces  them  of  their  error, 
and  again  receives  their  support. 

"While  a  portion  of  the  community  remain  ignorant  and 
unsuspecting,  for  the  artful  and  designing  demagogue  to 
play  upon  and  deceive;  and  the  more  intelligent  give  ear 
and  countenance  to  idle  clamour  and  unfounded  reports, 
you  will  find  your  legislative  halls  filled  ^with  the  former 
class  of  representatives,  while  the  latter  never  attempt  to 
stem  that  torrent  of  scurrility  which  lies  between  them  and 
an  honorable  seat. 

"If  you  have  anything  on  earth  to  give  your  children, 
vest  it  in  the  head — in  every  sense  of  the  word,  it  is  a  life 
estate. 

"If  you  have  talents,  wisdom  and  integrity  among  you, 
and  that  you  have  there  can  be  no  doubt,  I  conjure  you, 
fellow-citizens,  if  you  ever  intend  to  employ  them,  to  do  so 
now.     A  more  propitious  time  will  never  arrive. 

"Most  joyfully  will  I  join  with  you,  to  place  that  one  of 
you,  most  distinguished  for  these  attributes,  in  that  seat  I  so 
lately  sought  to  occupy — indulging  the  fond  hopes,  that  the 
able  and  distinguished  individual,  who  may  occupy  it,  will  do 
honor  to  himself  and  his  constituents,  and  will  sustain  and 
advance  the  interests  of  our  beloved  country. 

"Accept,  fellow  citizens,  a  renewal  of  my  thanks  for  the 


118  JOHN  iMOTLEY  MOREllEAD 

contulence  you  have  heretofore  placed  in  your  fillmv  citizen 
and  humble  servant. 

"John  M.  Morchcad." 
"Grecnsboronj;h.  July   11,  18v^2." 

In  this  adtlrcss  are  evidences  of  the  lart^e  mould  in  which 
John  Motlcv  Morehead  was  cast,  llis  was  the  spirit  of  the 
statesman.  The  West  at  this  critical  juncture  could  not 
afford  to  allow  dividing  contests,  and  he  personally  wouUl 
not  be  the  subject  of  one  in  the  presence  of  such  a  great 
opportunity  to  get  a  new  constitution  aud  the  lesser  organs 
of  the  transformation  of  NcMth  C'arolina.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  showed  the  bold  fearlessness  of  the  master  surgeon, 
probing  to  the  seat  of  disease  and  following  it  with  knife 
and  scalpel.  Likewise,  as  a  modern  surgeon,  he  used  the 
anesthetic  of  a  hue  and  lofty  feeling,  gentle  humor  and  goi)tl 
will.  But  all  his  efforts  came  to  naught  si)  far  as  the  Assem- 
bly of  1832-33  was  concerned,  for  although  so  progressive 
a  westerner  as  Judge  David  L.  Swain  of  Buncombe  was 
chosen  Governor,  when  on  December  3,  1832,  Senator  Mar- 
tin of  Mr.  Morehead's  old  home  county  of  Rockingham 
presented  a  preamble  reciting  people's  desire  for  a  new  con- 
stitution, election  of  Governor  by  themselves,  and  a  possible 
change  of  the  capital  from  Ixaleigh.  to  which  was  added  a 
resolution  proviiling  for  vote  on  a  convention  in  August, 
1833,  it  did  not  succeed,  while  on  the  17th.  action  was  begun 
on  a  House  bill  to  provide  a  new  capitol  in  Raleigh.  On  the 
18th.  antl  on  the  20th,  tights  for  and  against  the  latter  bill 
were  made  by  Senators  Leake  and  Martin,  the  Raleigh 
capitol  party  winning  in  each  by  a  vote  of  33  and  36,  against 
27 — the  solid  new  constitution  block.-  So  when  Mr.  More- 
head,  as  an  elector  on  the  overwhelming  Jackson-Van  Buren 
ticket — again  against  his  ow'u  county  which  went  for  Clay 
and  Sergeant — he  knew  the  constitutional  contest  was  again 
delayed. 

When,  however,  during  the  Christmas  holidays,  it  was 
realized  what  had  happened,  the  friends  of  the  Convention 

'  The  result  was  thiit  Candidate  Parker  was  chosen  Senator. 
*  The  defections  from  the  vole  of  1831  came  from  such  counties  as  Dladen, 
Duplin,  Onslow  and  a  few  others. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMEXT  119 

in  the  Assembly,  met  on  January  4,  1833,  and  elected  Gen- 
eral Polk  of  Rowan  chairman,  and  it  became  evident  they 
were  there  for  but  one  thing,  namely,  to  find  a  mode  for  the 
people  of  North  Carolina  to  express  themselves  on  the  desire 
for  a  convention.  Among  them  were  some  eastern  men  who 
realized  the  gravity  of  the  situation  and  felt  that  now  the 
capitol  question  was  settled,  the  West's  demand  for  the 
North  Carolina  Railroad,  already  surveyed  from  Newbern 
to  Raleigh  by  Engineer  Francis  W.  Rawle  of  Pennsylvania, 
and  a  new  constitution  were  due  that  section.  These  were 
men  like  William  Gaston  of  Newbern,  David  Outlaw  of 
Beaufort,  William  H.  Haywood  of  Raleigh,  and  others. 
This  unofficial  constitutional  convention  recommended  that 
election  officers  take  the  unofficial  vote  of  the  people  and  for- 
ward returns  to  the  Governor,  and  that  officer  in  turn  to  the 
Assembly ;  that  a  committee  of  four  issue  an  "Address"  and 
explain  the  amendments  sought  and  that  county  committees 
of  three  aid  these  purposes.  The  four  for  the  "Address" 
were  Richmond  M.  Pearson,  Romulus  M.  Saunders,  William 
H.  Haywood,  Jr.,  and  Thomas  Dews.  The  local  committee 
for  Guilford  county  was  Air.  Morehead,  George  C.  Alenden- 
hall,  John  M.  Dick,  and  F.  L.  Simpson ;  and  the  rest  were 
men  of  like  character ;  so  that  it  was  plain  that  this  unofficial 
constitutional  convention  was  not  going  to  be  an  inefficient 
one. 

While  awaiting  their  action  preparatory  to  the  August 
elections  attention  may  be  turned  to  other  momentous  events. 
One  might  dwell  long  on  the  nullification  movement  led  by 
South  Carolina  but  as  fiercely  and  impatiently  resisted  by 
her  sister  Carolina  were  is  not  so  well  known  a  part  of 
national  history.  The  action  of  President  Jackson,  in  this 
matter  endeared  him  to  the  old  North  State,  even  when  she 
opposed  him  on  other  scores;  but  the  subject  of  railroads 
w^as  as  much  uppermost  in  men's  minds  as  that  of  the  re- 
vision of  the  fundamental  law.  While  in  the  previous 
November,  Halifax  had  said  she  was  getting  goods  more 
quickly  than  ever  because  of  the  Petersburg  thirty  miles  of 
railroad  that  didn't  even  reach  them,  and  a  toll-bridge  bill 
for  the  Roanoke  at  W'eldon  was  passed  on   Tanuar\-  3rd 


120  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

[1833]  and  the  Virginia  bill  for  a  Portsmouth  and  Roanoke 
Railroad  was  also  passed  to  enable  it  to  reach  Weldon — 
Portsmouth  notice  of  rivalling  Petersburg  for  the  Roanoke 
valley  trade — it  was  announced  on  February  15th,  that  the 
Petersburg  road  was  complete,  with  a  locomotive,  for  41 
miles,  and  that  tri-weekly  four-horse  coaches  from  Raleigh 
took  passengers  to  it  at  Belfield.     The   Raleigh  "Experi- 
mental Railroad"  from  the  new  capitol  site  to  the  quarry 
had  been  completed  on  January  4th,  at  which  time  Engineer 
Rawle's  formidable  estimate  of  $5000  a  mile  for  the  North 
Carolina  Central  Railroad  from  Beaufort  harbor  to  Raleigh 
and  $9000  for  the  Yadkin  line  came  out  as  a  great  dis- 
courager of  the  project.     This  led  to  the  Raleigh  Register 
proposing  an  extension  of  the  "Experimental"  line  to  the 
Neuse  River,  and,  by  March,  Granville  county  held  a  meeting 
at  Oxford  proposing  a  railroad  through  that  place  to  con- 
nect with  the   Petersburg  and  the  proposed   Portsmouth- 
Norfolk  road  at  Weldon.     Fayetteville  was  working  hard  in 
January  and  February  raising  $200,000  for  the  Cape  Fear 
and  Yadkin  Valley  road ;  while  in  April  the  Granville  people 
had  another  meeting,  this  time  proposing  that  the  line  have 
Blakely  on  the  Roanoke  as  an  objective,  instead  of  Weldon, 
and  go  westward  through  Warrenton  and  Oxford.     They 
told  of  how  two  cars  and  about  forty  people  were  easily 
drawn  by  two  horses ;  how  the  road  across  New  Jersey, 
from  the  Delaware  at  Bordentown  to  Amboy  toward  New 
York,  had  a  locomotive  and  eleven  cars  with  200  people  car- 
ried at  15  miles  an  hour!     By  April  the  old  capitol  ruins  at 
Raleigh  were  being  removed  and  the  "Experimental"  line 
getting  ready  to  haul  stones  from  the  quarry.     A  traveler 
visiting  Newbern,  in  June,  notes  that  the  Petersburg  line  has 
thoroughly  convinced  that  section  of  railroad  efficiency ;  that 
in  Orange  county  railroads  was  the  "talk  of  every  third 
man ;"  that  the  Neuse  people's  slowness  is  forcing  the  north- 
ern counties  to  connect  up  with  the  Petersburg  road,  and 
proposes  a  line  from  Raleigh  to  Smithfield  on  the  Neuse,  18 
miles,  which,  if  made  as  cheaply  as  the  "Experimental"  line, 
at   $2800   a   mile   would   cost   but   $68,000.     The   Raleigh 
Register  editor  on  same  date,  June  11th,  proposes  an  exten- 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  121 

sion  of  the  "Experimental"  line  to  South  Washington  in 
New  Hanover  county,  about  75  miles,  and  make  that  the 
head  of  navigation  instead  of  Wilmington. 

By  this  time,  the  committee  of  the  unofficial  constitu- 
tional convention  at  Raleigh  issued  their  "Address"  on  June 
18th  [1833].  This  was  a  strong  presentation:  They  said 
that  33  counties  with  only  156,000  population  elect  a  ma- 
jority of  the  Assembly  when  31  have  over  316,000  popu- 
lation; that  the  33  have  only  an  $8000  land  tax  while  the  31 
have  $17,000;  that  the  33  elect  a  majority,  with  all  taxes 
only  $24,000  as  against  31  with  twice  that  amount;  that  half 
of  the  33  do  not  pay  enough  to  even  pay  their  own  members' 
salaries — two-thirds  taxed  by  one-third  to  pay  minority  for 
controlling  the  majority!  that  40  counties  do  not  pay  taxes 
to  equal  their  share  in  public  expenses,  yet  elect  two-thirds 
of  the  Assembly!  that  the  40  do  not  contain  an  average 
population ;  that  46,600  people  have  no  larger  share  in  gov- 
ernment than  9000!  In  1776  the  36  counties  had  115  mem- 
bers, but  in  1833  the  64  counties  have  199 — double  the  size 
an  Assembly  ought  to  be ;  so  that  there  has  been  an  annual 
deficit  of  $12,000  to  $17,000  for  years!  They  propose: 
1.  Reduction  in  size  of  Assembly;  2.  Biennial  meetings 
only ;  3.  Popular  election  of  Governor ;  4.  No  borough  repre- 
sentation ;  5.  And  a  new  mode  of  amendment.  They  point 
out  that  New  York,  Virginia,  New  Hampshire,  and  Georgia 
have  already  revised  their  old  constitutions. 

The  main  burden  of  their  paper,  however,  was  an  argu- 
ment for  a  limited  convention.  Indeed,  they  distinctly  avow 
that  "no  unlimited  convention  is  asked."  They  remind  the 
people  that  the  conventions  to  merely  accept  or  reject  the 
national  constitution  were  limited ;  that  the  New  York  con- 
vention of  1801  was  limited ;  likewise  the  Virginia  conven- 
tion and  those  of  New  Hampshire  and  Georgia.  The  North 
Carolina  constitution,  they  say,  is  silent  on  a  mode  of  re- 
vision; but,  they  add  "in  this  country,"  sovereignty,  "is 
lodged  with  a  majority  of  the  people"  and  these  can  deter- 
mine that  mode,  keeping  in  view  justice  to  the  minority,  the 
right  of  the  majority,  and  the  interest  of  both.  It  was  a 
most  able  and  disinterested  paper  and  was  destined  to  point 


122  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

out  the  way  to  final  settlement  of  the  generation-long  con- 
troversy/ 

Coordinate  with  this  and  the  railroad  agitation,  was  the 
establishment  of  a  new  Bank  of  North  Carolina  provided 
for  in  January  [1833]  to  take  the  place  of  the  old  State  Bank 
whose  charter  would  expire  in  1835.  It  was  to  be  capitalized 
at  $2,000,000,  one-half  of  the  stock  to  be  taken  by  the  State ; 
and  with  a  head  bank  in  Raleigh  were  to  be  branches  in 
leading  centers  over  the  state — a  recurring  necessity  be- 
cause of  the  President's  new  attack  on  and  final  destruction 
of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States.  On  January  8th  of  this 
year,  Governor  Swain  appointed  commissioners  to  take  sub- 
scriptions to  the  new  Bank  of  North  Carolina  in  the  leading 
towns,  and  he  made  Mr.  Morehead  chairman  of  the 
Greensboro  body,  composed  of  Messrs.  Lindsay,  Humphries, 
Maxwell  and  Parker.  "Senex,"  whose  series  of  papers 
was  pleading  for  the  new  constitution,  incidentally  but  ably 
touched  upon  the  bank  question,  saying  that  since  the  State 
Bank  was  created  in  1812,  $2,000,000  had  "taken  wings  and 
flown  away."^ 

Various  matters  came  to  a  strategic  head  on  Independence 
Day  at  Raleigh,  when  the  laying  of  the  corner-stone  of  the 
new  capitol  was  also  made  the  occasion  of  what  might  be 
called  a  "Transportation  Convention,'  but  was  entitled 
"Internal  Improvement  Convention."  As  the  new  capitol, 
in  a  very  true  sense,  represents  the  new  North  Carolina 
of  a  new  constitution  and  modern  development,  it  may  be 
well  to  take  more  careful  note  of  it,  as  the  corner-stone  was 
laid  on  this  4th  of  July,  1833 :  That  it  should  epitomize  the 
efifort  to  unite  North  Carolinians  in  both  a  constitutional 
and  transportational  way  is  unique.  The  Scotch  architect, 
David  Paton  of  Edinburgh,  took  charge  not  long  after  the 
corner-stone  was  laid  and  had  much  to  do  in  determining  its 
character.  It  is  about  twenty  feet  longer,  north  and  south, 
than  east  and  west,  so  that  it  can  be  said  to  front  both  east 
and  west,  but  the  east  front  is  most  used  as  front,  at  the 
head  of  Newbern  Avenue,  named  for  the  city  whose  able 


1  Raleigh  Register,   18th   June,   1833. 
^Ibid.,  11th  June.  1833,  "Senex"  No.  IV. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  123 

citizen,  William  Gaston,  had  so  much  to  do  with  harmonizing 
the  conflicting  elements  which  raged  around  this  capitol  for 
and  against  a  new  constitution  and  some  unifying  mode  of 
transportation  and  trade  centers.  The  greatest  height,  the 
dome,  is  97^  feet.  Built  completely  of  stone  from  the 
Raleigh  quarry,  it  is  of  Grecian  Doric  style,  copied  from  the 
Temple  of  Minerva,  or  Parthenon,  of  Athens  of  500  B.C., 
its  octagon  tower  forming  the  rotunda  and  being  capped 
by  a  crown  similar  to  that  of  the  Lanthorn  of  Demosthenes. 
The  proportions  may  be  realized  when  it  is  known  that  the 
columns  of  the  east  and  west  porticos  are  over  five  feet  in 
diameter.  The  vestibules  and  corridors  are  decorated  with 
Ionic  columns,  and  the  rest  with  groined  arches  on  Doric 
columns  and  pilasters.  The  Governor's  rooms  are  in  the 
southwest  corner,  and  the  Senatorial  and  Representative 
Halls  are  in  keeping  with  the  rest  of  this  noble  Greek  struc- 
ture, which  cost  the  state  over  a  half  million  dollars — a 
capitol  of  which  even  the  20th  century  North  Carolina  may 
well  be  proud.  But  only  its  corner-stone  was  finished  on 
this  day  by  the  company  which  met  at  "Government 
House,"  as  the  executive  mansion  at  the  foot  of  Fayetteville 
street  was  then  called,  and  served  as  temporary  capitol. 
Governor  Swain  presided  at  the  function  in  the  morning, 
as  he  did  at  the  more  important  one  at  Government  House 
in  the  afternoon. 

This  Convention  was  a  peculiar  one,  composed  of  some  of 
the  strongest  men  of  the  state,  and  especially  of  the  east,  for 
it  was  essentially  an  eastern  convention :  out  of  20  counties 
represented,  only  Chatham,  Orange  and  Wilkes  could  prop- 
erly be  called  western,  as  Cumberland,  Wake,  and  Granville 
were  sometimes  one  or  the  other.  Governor  Swain  was 
properly  from  the  west,  though  credited  to  Wake  county. 
Gaston,  of  Newbern,  was  always  a  great  harmonizing  force, 
and  he  represented  a  constituency  committed  to  the  North 
Carolina  Central  Railroad  and  a  new  constitution,  if  it  could 
be  wisely  done.  Raleigh  sent  George  E.  Badger,  James  Ire- 
dell, Dr.  William  McPheeters,  the  Haywoods,  Judge  Sea- 
well,  Charles  Manly,  Editor  Gales,  and  others  of  like  stand- 
ing.   Orange,  from  the  west,   had    such    men  as  Nash,  W.  A. 


124  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Graham,  W.  J.  Bingham,  and  similar  characters.  Mr.  More- 
head  and  his  brother,  James  T.,  were  there  from  Greens- 
boro.^ It  was  as  though  Newbern,  Raleigh,  Hillsboro  and 
Greensboro — the  mid-Carolina  centers — had  got  together 
to  find  a  golden  mean  between  the  desires  of  the  Roanoke, 
the  Cape  Fear,  and  the  Yadkin  and  Catawba,  which  were  all 
fearful  lest  they  be  left  out  in  the  play  for  a  favorable 
seat,  when  the  great  new  god — the  Locomotive — entered 
North  Carolina  with  his  procession  of  passenger  and 
freight  cars.  Under  such  circumstances,  it  required  great 
skill  to  find  just  what  they  could  agree  upon.  Transporta- 
tion was  the  real  subject,  but  they  used  the  term  "Internal 
Improvement;"  and  it  was  evident  that  while  they  saw  the 
rising  tide  of  sentiment  toward  railroads — the  cry  of  the 
west,  they  clung  to  the  water  side  of  transportation 
tenaciously;  that  was  a  fixed  quantity,  while  the  railroad 
could  go  anywhere  and  cause  a  revolution  in  the  importance 
of  position  on  water  routes.  Almost  every  community  of 
any  wealth  saw  opportunity  to  itself  to  build  a  railroad 
to  its  nearest  market.  Consequently  the  burden  of  this 
convention  was  favorable  to  new  transportation ;  that  funds 
should  be  created  by  the  state  for  it;  that  the  state  should 
take  two-fifths  of  the  stock  of  any  enterprise  in  this  line 
when  the  other  three-fifths  were  privately  subscribed.  To 
this  end  an  "Address"  should  be  issued ;  proceedings  should 
be  laid  before  the  Legislature ;  committees  of  correspondence 
be  appointed  in  each  county ;  and  a  full  convention  be  held 
on  the  fouth  Monday  of  November,  1833.  Editor  Gales  of 
The  Register  thought  it  "perhaps  not  going  too  far  to  say 
that  it  was  the  most  talented,  respectable  and  dignified  body 
ever  convened  in  North  Carolina  for  any  purpose."^ 

President  Swain  made  William  Gaston  chairman  of  the 
general  committee  of  20,  and  on  July  20th  announced  his 
elaborate  committees  for  each  county,  in  one  of  which,  that 
for  Guilford  county,  Senator  Parker  was  chairman  and  Mr. 
Morehead  one  of  the  members.  Then  ten  days  later  the 
Gaston  general  committee  issued  its  address :  it  dwelt  on  the 

^  Greensboro  Patriot,  31st  July,   1833. 
-  Issue  of  July  9,  1833. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  125 

contrast  with  other  states  which  had  surpassed  it  in  develop- 
ment; "The  great  wants  of  our  state  then  are  emphatically- 
good  marts  of  traffic  and  the  means  of  cheap  transporta- 
tion," said  the  "Address."  Then  they  showed  that  natural 
water  routes  could  be  developed,  and  when  these  could  not, 
the  canal  and  railroad  must  enter.  Sacrifice  by  individuals 
and  aid  by  the  state  was  the  slogan ;  and  a  great  Convention 
in  November.  It  was  a  strong  appeal  to  forget  the  mistakes 
of  the  past  and  move  forward,  and  worthy  of  the  pen  of 
William  Gaston. 

Thereupon  a  movement  arose  in  Raleigh  to  immedi- 
ately make  an  effort  to  get  subscriptions  for  that  section 
of  the  "Central"  railroad  between  Raleigh  and  Waynesboro 
(later  Goldsboro)  on  the  Neuse,  to  be  extended  later  to 
Beaufort  or  Wilmington  or  both.  Governor  Swain  was 
active  in  it,  while  Gen.  Edward  B.  Dudley  and  others  of 
Wilmington,  early  in  August,  secured  a  public  meeting 
and  appeal  to  the  counties  between  them  and  Waynesboro 
and  Raleigh  for  subscriptions  to  a  railroad  to  Waynesboro 
to  connect  with  a  Raleigh  line.  They  announced  that 
they  already  had  $173,000  and  aimed  at  $180,000.  "Citi- 
zens of  Fayetteville !"  said  the  Observer,  "Will  not  such 
facts  as  these  rouse  you  to  action?"  Waynesboro  and 
Pittsboro  followed  with  subscriptions.  On  August  2nd, 
at  Smithfield,  Johnston  county,  $22,000  was  subscribed 
in  a  mere  election  crowd.  Newbern  meetings  called  a 
district  convention  at  Kinston  in  September,  and  by 
27th  August  Waynesboro  territory  had  raised  $60,000  for 
a  Wilmington  road  to  Raleigh  by  way  of  that  place  and 
Smithfield.  This  was  all  voluntary,  but  stimulated  by  the 
Raleigh  Convention  of  July  4th.  A  meeting  on  the 
29th  of  August  at  Pittsboro,  Chatham  county,  was  somewhat 
divided,  but  was  for  improving  the  Cape  Fear  above  Fayette- 
ville; and  on  the  27th  of  August  Beaufort  city's  meeting 
decided  on  a  railroad  from  there  to  Trenton — thus  passing 
by  Newbern — and  urging  Onslow  and  Jones  counties  to  aid 
them  in  it.  The  Wilmington  Press,  in  September,  showed 
that  $400,000  had  been  subscribed  for  a  Wilmington  and 
Raleigh  Railroad — a  port-to-capital  road — via  Waynesboro, 


126  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

already  by  various  interests  along  the  route.  The  Kinston 
meeting,  presided  over  by  Governor  Swain,  late  in  that 
month  raised  $30,000  for  a  railroad  from  Beaufort 
to  Waynesboro  (later  Goldsboro).  The  Wilmington  activity, 
however,  did  not  satisfy  the  western  people,  and  the  upper 
Roanoke  country  and  tributaries  began  intense  activity  for  a 
road  from  Weldon,  to  which  the  Petersburg  railroad  was 
nearly  complete,  westward  by  way  of  Oxford,  in  a  meeting 
at  Hillsboro  on  September  9th.  The  Beaufort  and  western 
idea,  represented  by  Governor  Swain,  and  the  Oxford  and 
western  desires,  represented  by  Judge  Thomas  Ruffin,  came 
in  conflict,  when  the  latter  was  elected  President  over  the 
former  by  a  vote  of  26  to  16.  The  result  was  the  avowal 
for  such  a  road  and  that  a  charter  should  be  sought  en- 
titled the  Roanoke  and  Yadkin  Railroad  Company.  It  is 
curious  to  note  that  nearly  all  of  these  plans  wanted  Mr. 
Morehead  to  head  their  committee  in  Guilford  county,  as 
did  this  Hillsboro  Railroad  convention;  but  there  is  more 
evidence  that  he  was  most  interested  in  the  North  Carolina 
Central  Railroad  plan  from  Beaufort  and  in  the  unofficial 
vote  for  a  Constitutional  Convention.  He  was,  therefore, 
not  at  the  Hillsboro  Railroad  Convention,  although  they 
appointed  him  head  of  their  Guilford  county  committee. 

The  wide-spread  interest  in  railroads,  all  over  the 
United  States,  was  indicated  by  the  appearance  this  month 
of  The  Atnerican  Railroad  Journal  in  New  York ;  and  it  was 
proposed  to  run  the  New  York  and  Erie  Railroad  directly 
through  to  Chicago  and  to  complete  it  in  seven  years.  The 
line  from  Washington  to  New  York  was  all  provided  for, 
except  the  part  between  Baltimore  and  Port  Deposit  on  the 
Susquehanna ;  and  there  was  prospect  that  there  would  soon 
be  a  railroad  from  Maine  to  New  Orleans,  with  branch 
lines  from  it — a  great  Piedmont  line  being  in  view  at  this 
early  date.  This  great  movement  was  taking  on  so  many 
complications  in  North  Carolina,  however,  that  it  was  evi- 
dent the  coming  Raleigh  November  Convention  would  be  a 
great  battle  ground.  Johnston  county  had  a  meeting  favor- 
ing a  road  from  Fayetteville  and  Smithfield  to  Halifax, 
which  did  not  look  favorable  to  Wilmington's  plans.     The 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  127 

Salisbury  meeting  of  October  17th,  seemed  inclined  toward 
Fayetteville  also,  though  it  deferred  to  the  Raleigh  conven- 
tion of  November. 

The  months  of  October  and  November,  1833,  were  a 
pregnant  period.  The  action  of  President  Jackson  in 
ordering  the  removal  of  national  deposits  from  the  Bank  of 
the  United  States  and  the  use  of  Roger  B.  Taney  to  enforce 
it  startled  the  whole  union  and  no  part  more  so  than  North 
Carolina.  It  meant  the  flowering  of  a  great  anti-Jackson 
movement  in  this  state,  as  vigorous  as  the  anti-Nullification 
movement  was  for  him.  The  Assembly  was  to  meet  and  it 
was  to  be  a  notable  one,  before  whom  was  to  be  laid  the 
unofficial  vote  of  North  Carolina  on  a  new  Constitutional 
Convention.  In  addition  to  this  was  the  great  Transporta- 
tion Convention  to  meet  in  Raleigh.  But  before  turning 
attention  to  these  let  it  be  noted,  that  Mr.  Morehead,  besides 
being  a  great  lawyer  in  active  practice,  and  the  recognized 
head  of  his  counties'  activities  for  the  North  Carolina 
Railroad  prospects,  the  Bank  of  North  Carolina  subscrip- 
tions, and  a  Jackson  leader,  he  was  interested  in  the 
Humphrey  Cotton  Mills  at  Greensboro,  which  had  just 
received  a  steam-engine  from  Pittsburgh ;  had  two  great 
plantations  at  Leaksville,  one  of  which  he  farmed  under  his 
own  direction;  and  on  October  16th  [1833]  in  the  Greens- 
boro Patriot  advertised  as  one  of  the  firm  of  Barnet  &  More- 
head,  his  partner  having  built  the  first  mill  in  1813,  a  plant 
composed  of  a  saw-mill,  oil  mill,  carding  mill,  cotton  gin, 
blacksmith  shop,  general  merchandise,  and  supplies  store, 
and  their  own  line  of  boats  on  the  Dan  River.  These  became 
his  own  property  later  on  the  death  of  his  partner.  And  his 
devotion  to  private  affairs  did  not  signify  that  his  motto — 
Quiesccre  nan  Possum  hung  in  any  less  prominent  place  on 
the  walls  of  his  mind.  It  did,  however,  indicate  that  he 
realized  that  there  was  to  be  little  public  progress  in  other 
lines  until  the  fundamental  basis  of  such  progress  was 
secured — namely,  a  new  constitution.  This  was  true,  not 
only  because  it  was  right ;  but  because,  notwithstanding  the 
few  leaders  of  that  section  with  broad  ideas  like  William 
Gaston,  the  east  acted  on  local  interests  and  were  unable 


128  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

apparently  to  grasp  the  broad  unifying  conception  of  the 
state  as  a  whole.  Mr.  Morehead's  conceptions  were  well 
known  and  in  no  sense  vague.  As  Washington  had  once 
said  in  the  apparently  hopeless  days  of  the  early  1780s  on 
the  same  subject,  that  the  people  must  suffer  still  more  be- 
fore they  would  feel  enough  to  act,  so  John  Motley  More- 
head  might  have  said  in  the  early  1830s  regarding  all 
questions,  and  especially  the  one  concerning  a  new  state 
constitution. 

The  meeting  of  the  Assembly  on  November  18th  [1833] 
gave  Governor  Swain  an  opportunity  to  state  the  great 
questions  before  the  people,  but  while  ably  stating  the  secon- 
dary ones  he  was  notably  silent  on  the  one  great  primary 
one  of  a  new  constitution.  And  this  was  not  because  he  did 
not  consider  it  primary,  himself,  but  because  he  saw  from 
the  character  of  the  present  Assembly,  especially  the  lower 
house,  that  the  people  had  little  to  hope  from  it.  Further- 
more, the  death  of  Chief  Justice  Henderson  gave  that  ele- 
ment opportunity  to  remove  the  great  power  of  William 
Gaston  from  the  active  arena  of  public  leadership  to  the 
sequestered  shades  of  the  Supreme  Court.  Governor 
Swain  was  re-elected  and  he  dwelt  upon  what  he  called  the 
"excitement"  in  every  part  of  the  state  on  "Internal  Improve- 
ment," which  practically  always  meant  "transportation." 
He  showed  that  real  improvement  had  been  made  since 
Murphy's  original  movement  in  1818-19;  but  asserted  that 
the  railroad  would  be  "the  commencement  of  a  new  era  in 
the  annals  of  physical  inmprovement."  One  can  feel  the 
intense  jealousy  of  every  corner  of  the  state  in  his  scrupu- 
lously cautious  general  territorial  terms  in  reference  to  it. 
To  increase  the  educational  Fund  he  dwells  upon  the  over 
2,500,000  acres  of  fertile  swamp  land,  three-fifths  of  which 
was  state  property,  and  the  whole  was  one-twentieth  of  the 
extent  of  the  state  and  probably  one-eighth  in  fertility  urg- 
ing its  reclaimability,  and  as  an  educational  Fund  measure. 
The  currency  and  bank  questions  w^ere  acute,  and  the  Bank 
of  North  Carolina  charter  was  not  inviting  to  capital,  and 
must  be  made  to ;  for  a  bank  must  not  be  created  to  escape 
taxation,   but   to   regulate   the   currency.     He    dwells   also 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  129 

upon  revision  of  the  statutes  from  the  earliest  one  of  1235 
and  the  first  "revised  code"  of  1715  and  thought  almost 
everything  before  1777  might  be  discarded — but  he  said 
nothing  about  a  new  constitution. 

November  25th,  however,  was  the  red-letter  day  of  the 
session,  for  on  that  day  the  Governor  presented  to  the  As- 
sembly Chairman  Thomas  G.  Polk's  report  on  the  results 
of  the  unofficial  vote  of  the  people  on  a  Constitutional  Con- 
vention. This  report  showed  "that,  in  thirty-three  counties 
in  North  Carolina  more  than  thirty  thousand  freemen  have 
voluntarily  demanded  of  their  immediate  representatives  a 
change  in  our  State  Constitution."  Furthermore,  these  re- 
turns "exhibit  a  vote,  which  is  by  several  thousand  over  a 
majority  of  the  largest  poll  ever  held  in  North  Carolina  for 
the  election  of  a  President  of  the  United  States.'"  A  large 
majority  of  the  people  of  North  Carolina  had  therefore  de- 
manded a  Constitutional  Convention. 

On  Saturday  the  Internal  Improvement  Convention  at 
Raleigh  laid  before  the  Assembly  their  program:  1.  A  ship 
channel  connecting  Beaufort  harbor  with  the  Pamlico  and 
Neuse  river,  to  avoid  Ocracoke  Inlet ;  2.  A  railroad  from 
the  sea  to  Tennessee ;  3.  A  Roanoke-South  Carolina  railroad 
above  the  falls  of  rivers ;  and  4.  A  canal  or  railroad  from 
Edenton  to  Dismal  Swamp  canal.  This  was  a  $5,000,000 
proposition.  Four  Roanoke  counties  had  voted  against  it, 
but  44  counties  and  towns  had  voted  for  it.  It  was  vague 
and  was  of  no  value  to  the  Roanoke  country,  and  had  in  it 
nothing  to  hold  them  back  from  connecting  up  by  railroad 
with  Petersburg  and  Norfolk;  and  it  left  the  Wilmington- 
Beaufort  rivalry  on  the  door-step  in  plain  sight ! 

And  what  did  the  Assembly  do  with  these  two  momen- 
tous programes?  It  spent  the  longest  period  in  session  in 
the  history  of  North  Carolina  to  that  date,  namely  57  days, 
adjourning  from  Government  House,  or  the  executive  man- 
sion, on  January  13,  1834 ;  and  yet  the  organization  of  a  bank 
system  and  charters  for  a  few  privately  owned  railroad 
propositions  was  all  that  was  done  with  great  questions. 


1  Raleigh  Register,  3rd  December,  1833.     Letters  dated  25th  November. 


130  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

The  transportation  program  failed  because  of  the  fight  over 
the  constitutional  question,  chiefly.  The  Senate  was  in- 
clined to  accept  a  convention  program  of  a  limited  kind 
and  had  even  passed  it  on  final  reading,  but  the  House  by 
five  votes  only  rejected  it.  "If  the  people  of  the  Eastern 
counties,"  wrote  Editor  Gales  of  The  Raleigh  Register, 
"knew  the  excitement  which  exists  in  the  West  touching 
this  matter — if  they  were  aware,  as  their  representatives  in 
the  Legislature  must  be,  that  unless  the  grievances  com- 
plained of  be  speedily  redressed,  the  yeomanry  of  the  West 
will  take  the  remedy  into  their  own  hands — if  they  were 
enlightened  as  to  the  defects  which  exist  in  our  constitution, 
and  were  convinced  of  the  utter  hopelessness  of  achieving 
anything  for  the  advancement  of  the  State,  while  these  evils 
are  without  a  remedy — if,  we  say,  proper  exertions  were 
made  to  inform  them  on  these  points,  they  would  cordially 
sustain  the  course  of  those  who  have  'dared  to  be  honest  in 
the  worst  of  times.'  That  the  people  of  the  West  will  ulti- 
mately obtain  the  relief  for  which  they  are  seeking  is  as  cer- 
tain as  that  their  demand  is  founded  in  equity.  Then  let 
us  meet  our  brethren  half  way — let  us  arrange  our  differ- 
ences in  such  a  manner,  as  will  secure  to  them  their  legiti- 
mate rights,  without  making  us  'hewers  of  wood  and  drawers 
water.'"'  On  the  11th  of  January,  immediately  after 
the  Convention  bill  was  rejected  by  the  House,  friends 
of  the  measure  held  a  meeting  to  provide  an  organization  to 
go  to  the  people  and  urge  them  to  instruct  their  representa- 
tives to  provide  for  calling  of  a  convention  at  the  next  As- 
sembly. Senator  Robert  Martin  of  Rockingham  was,  as 
usual,  active  in  it;  Fisher  of  Rowan  proposed  the  resolu- 
tions, and  the  Executive  Committee  chosen  were  Wm.  H. 
Haywood,  Jr.,  of  Raleigh,  chairman ;  Judge  R.  M.  Saunders 
and  Editor  W.  R.  Gales  of  the  same  city ;  Wm.  A.  Graham 
of  Hillsboro;  James  Seawell  of  Fayetteville ;  and  Wm.  R. 
Hargrove  of  Granville  county. 

As  this  was  destined  to  be  the  last  reactionary  legislature 
obstructive  of  a  new  constitution,  it  will  be  of  interest  to 

1  Issue  of  January   14,  1834. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  131 

note  an  analysis  of  it,  by  occupation :  of  the  199  members 
of  the  Assembly,  147  were  married  and  52  single  men. 
The  great  bulk  of  them,  145,  were  farmers  or  planters,  while 
the  next  greatest  single  block  was  31  composed  of  lawyers. 
Seven  merchants  came  next  and  six  physicians,  with  six  of 
no  occupation  at  all,  evidently  retired.  Two  blacksmiths, 
one  tailor,  and  one  tavern  keeper  made  up  the  rest. 

These  law-makers  were  convinced  of  one  thing,  however, 
and  that  was  the  desirability  of  railroads,  as  a  private  enter- 
prise; they  were  not  even  yet  convinced  that  public  money 
should  be  put  into  them.  Speaking  of  the  Raleigh  "Experi- 
mental Railroad,"  Editor  Edmund  Ruftin  of  The  Farmer-'s 
Register  of  Richmond,  said  on  November  26th :  "This  little 
Railroad  has  doubtless  had  much  effect  in  promoting  the 
present  zeal  for  similar  and  more  extensive  works.  We 
are  much  more  ready  to  be  impressed  by  what  we  see,  even 
if  we  hear  truths  demonstrated,  and  made  undeniable ;  and 
very  many,  who  have  come  to  the  seat  of  government  from 
every  quarter  of  the  State,  have  been  first  convinced  of  the 
advantages  of  railways  by  seeing  the  enormous  masses  of 
stone  conveyed  as  fast  and  as  easily  as  the  empty  cars  could 
be  drawn  on  good  common  roads."  Consequently  they 
passed  bills  to  incorporate  a  "North  Carolina  Central  Sea- 
port Railroad  Company,"  "The  Wilmington  and  Raleigh," 
and  the  "Greensville  and  Roanoke" — a  Virginia  road  to 
connect  at  Belfield  with  the  Petersburg  road  from  a  point 
above  the  falls  on  the  Roanoke,  later  to  be  called  Gaston, 
"The  Roanoke  and  Yadkin,"  "The  Campbellton  and  Fayette- 
ville" — a  short  experimental  railroad  at  Fayetteville  to  her 
river  wharf,  "The  Cape  Fear,  Yadkin  and  Pee  Dee,"  and  the 
"Roanoke  and  Raleigh."  These  were  all  to  be,  like  the  "Ex- 
perimental Railroad,"  at  Raleigh,  private  enterprises,  un- 
supported by  the  State,  and  when,  in  January,  1834,  the 
Raleigh  road  declared  a  ten  per  cent,  dividend,  it  gave  great 
encouragement  to  these  various  railroad  projects.  They 
were  likewise  encouraged  by  progress  elsewhere ;  for  ex- 
ample from  Washington  to  New  York  there  were  37  miles 
of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  to  Baltimore ;  41|  miles  from  the 
latter  city  to  Port  Deposit;  then  31|  miles  of  the  Oxford 


132  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Railroad  to  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad ;  then  the  latter  road 
into  Philadelphia  at  Broad  Street  for  46|  miles,  or  156  miles 
from  the  National  Capital  to  Philadelphia.  Then  a  mile  up 
Broad  Street  by  the  Northern  Liberties  and  Penn  Township 
Railroad;  then  27  miles  from  there  to  Trenton;  then  the 
Delaware  Bridge  and  New  Brunswick  turnpike,  26:^  miles; 
then  the  New  Jersey  Railroad  to  Jersey  City,  30  miles ;  and 
finally  4  miles  across  the  Hudson — a  total  of  244^  miles, 
very  much  of  which  was  completed.  In  England  there  were 
a  dozen  new  roads  projected;  next  door,  in  South  Carolina, 
was  a  locomotive  hauling  each  way  every  other  day,  and  the 
road  was  making  money. 

With  all  the  local  projects  in  North  Carolina  there  was 
one  region  that  proposed  the  Beaufort-Tennessee  or  "North 
Carolina  Central  Railroad,"  namely,  in  1827  when  President 
Caldwell,  as  "Carleton,"  advocated  it,  and  at  Jamestown  on 
June  28,  1828,  in  a  district  meeting  urged  it,  and  that  was 
Guilford  county.'  From  that  time  to  July,  1834,  they  had 
had  four  meetings  of  this  county  Internal  Improvement 
Convention,  but  the  one  of  July,  whose  public  address  ap- 
peared in  the  Greensboro  Patriot  of  July  14th  [1834], 
signed  by  Andrew  Lindsay  and  Dr.  David  Worth,  called 
upon  the  people  to  begin  building  the  railroad  from  Beau- 
fort to  Newbern  and  Raleigh  by  subscribing  3/5  of  the 
capital ;  but  also  announced  that  nothing  could  ever  be  done 
until  the  constitution  was  revised,  as  the  East  was  opposed 
to  transportation  improvement. 

This  was  followed  on  the  19th,  by  the  appearance  in  the 
Greensboro  Patriot  of  a  unique  public  letter,  signed  "Clin- 
ton," referring  no  doubt  to  Governor  De  Witt  Clinton  of 
Erie  Canal  fame,  and  purporting  to  be  from  Beaufort.  It 
was  the  first  of  a  series  and  is  so  similar  to  the  style  and 
ideas  of  John  Motley  Morehead  that  it  is  given  in  full : 

"Gentlemen :  A  request  has  been  made  to  county  com- 
mittees of  correspondence  and  others  who  feel  an  interest 

^  President  Caldwell  had  spoken  in  the  first  of  these  meetings  and  he  also 
spoke  in  a  Hillshoro  meeting  on  May  27,  1834,  in  which  he  urged  that  the  State 
was  without  debt,  had  a  capital  of  $800,000,  and  even  $500,000  after  the  $300,- 
000  bank  stock  was  taken  out;  so  that  the  State  could  easily  take  the  two-fifths, 
especially  when  private  capital  stood  ready  to  take  the  three-fifths.  Raleigh 
Register,  10th  June,  1834. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  133 

in  the  improvements  of  the  state  of  North  CaroHna,  to  com- 
municate their  plans  to  the  pubHc  previous  to  the  next  ses- 
sion of  the  legislature.  I  shall  therefore  submit  my  plan 
to  the  farmers  of  North  Carolina.  If  I  only  inherited  one- 
half  of  Girard's  fortune  I  would  amuse  myself  with  making 
a  grand  central  railroad  from  the  port  of  Beaufort  to  the 
Tennessee  line.  In  the  first  place  I  would  employ  an  ex- 
perienced engineer:  M.  Robinson,  H.  Allen,  or  A.  A.  Dexter 
might  probably  be  engaged ;  and  such  assistant  engineers  as 
they  might  deem  best  qualified  to  carry  on  the  work.  I 
would  then  take  them  out  on  Beaufort  bar — let  them  sound 
the  bar  outwards  and  inwards,  and  satisfy  them  that  there 
was  22  feet  [of]  water  at  ordinary  high  tides.  And  then  we 
would  sound  the  channel  up  to  Fort  Macon,  about  two 
miles,  with  from  four  to  five  fathoms  water,  good  harbor, 
and  safe  anchorage,  as  soon  as  you  get  within  the  bar. 
From  Fort  Macon  we  would  sound  up  to  the  mainland,  near 
Shepherd's  point,  about  two  miles,  by  which  they  would  be 
satisfied  that  the  lowest  cast  of  the  lead  in  this  noble  channel 
is  22  feet,  and  near  Shepherd's  point  this  channel  terminates 
in  a  large  harbor  or  basin,  with  from  four  to  five  fathoms 
water,  and  good  anchorage.  This  harbor  is  protected  by  a 
powerful  port.  Here  then  at  Shepherd's  point,  my  engi- 
neers would  commence  their  level,  and  proceed  in  the  best, 
most  practicable,  shortest  and  most  level  route,  to  Morgan- 
ton  in  Burke  county,  and  thence  by  the  most  practicable 
route  to  the  Tennessee  line.  I  shall  consult  my  own  interest 
in  selecting  the  best  and  shortest  route.  I  cannot  consent 
to  run  this  road  zig-zag  through  every  little  town  between 
Beaufort  harbor  and  Morganton.  The  main  road  must  be 
as  straight  as  possible,  to  facilitate  the  speed  of  the  loco- 
motive engines  and  freight  and  passenger  cars.  A  straight 
road  will  last  much  longer  than  one  in  which  there  are  fre- 
quent curves.  Let  all  the  county  towns  near  the  main  rail- 
road make  branches  into  it  as  soon  as  possible. 

"The  more  branches,  the  better  for  the  farmers — and 
the  merchants,  also.  Most  of  the  farmers  who  make  small 
quantities  of  produce  will  sell  it  to  the  merchants  in  the  in- 
terior towns  near  the  railroad.     As  soon  as  the  engineers 


134  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

could  get  ten  miles  of  the  road  levelled,  I  would  put  it  out  to 
contractors  at  a  public  sale,  after  due  notice.  These  con- 
tracts should  be  made  with  the  lowest  bidder,  fairly  and 
honestly.  And  proceed  on  in  the  same  way  as  soon  as  an- 
other ten  miles  is  levelled.  I  should  proceed  a  little  south 
of  the  lakes,  to  near  the  line  of  Onslow  county:  There 
would  be  a  slight  curve  in  the  road — and  thence  straight  to 
Trenton  or  near  it.  By  this  route  I  should  avoid  crossing 
Newport  river,  and  also  Trent  river  near  Newbern,  where  it 
is  navigable.  No  engineer  will  attempt  to  cross  a  navigable 
river,  when  he  can  possibly  avoid  it.  The  citizens  of  New- 
bern could  make  a  short  branch  railroad  to  join  near  Tren- 
ton. At  the  close  of  the  first  year,  say  1835,  I  would  have 
the  road  finished  to  Trenton,  and  two  Locomotive  steam 
engines,  with  a  sufficiency  of  passenger  and  freight  cars 
travelling  on  it.  The  distance  from  Shepherd's  point  to 
Trenton  is  about  45  miles.  From  Trenton  I  would  run  the 
road  in  a  straight  line  to  Haw  river  and  cross  that  stream 
by  a  stone  viaduct,  near  Haywoodborough.  From  Trenton 
to  the  Haw  river  is  about  100  miles.  I  would  'go  ahead'  the 
second  year,  and  at  the  close  of  1836,  would  have  the  line 
from  Shepherd's  point  to  the  Haw  river  in  operation.  The 
ground  is  so  favorable  in  this  division  of  the  road  and  timber 
so  convenient,  that  I  do  not  feel  a  doubt  of  completing  this 
division  by  the  close  of  1836.  In  1837  and  1838  I  would 
push  on  the  railroad  to  Morganton  in  Burke  county,  about 
one  hundred  and  forty-five  miles. 

'Tn  this  division  it  is  necessary  to  make  good  stone  via- 
ducts across  the  Haw,  Deep,  Yadkin  and  Catawba  rivers. 
All  these  viaducts  could  be  built  while  the  other  parts  of  the 
road  were  in  progress.  In  the  year  1839  I  would  carry  the 
railroad  from  Morganton  to  the  Tennessee  line,  in  Bun- 
combe county,  where  the  French  Broad  river  passes  through 
the  Bald  Mountain.  When  I  get  to  the  Tennessee  line,  I 
shall  think  it  is  'glory  enough'  to  have  accomplished  this 
great  state — I  have  a  mind  to  say — national  work. 

"Clinton.'" 

^Whether  the  series  were  all  written  by  the  same  hand  can  not  be  known; 
indeed  the  second  article,  on  Oct.   1st,  avows  it  to  have  been  written  by  a  resi- 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  135 

On  October  1st,  he  writes :  "I  agree  with  Dr.  Caldwell 
in  the  opinion  that  a  road  can  be  made  for  five  thousand 
dollars  per  mile,  including  locomotive,  passenger  and  freight 
cars.  But  it  is  prudent  to  allow  something  for  contingencies 
— say  250,000  dollars — which  makes  in  all  the  sum  of  two 
million  of  dollars. 

"If  I  had  the  funds  I  would  commence  the  work  and  only 
ask  of  the  legislature  the  same  rates  of  toll  which  are  re- 
ceived on  the  Charleston  and  Petersburg  railroads.  Time 
would  soon  demonstrate  that  I  had  a  fortune  equal  to  any 
man  in  the  United  States.  But,  as  I  have  not  the  honor  to 
be  the  son  of  Girard,  how  shall  the  funds  be  raised?  Let 
the  next  legislature  authorize  the  Governor  and  treasurer 
of  the  State  to  borrow  in  London,  or  elsewhere,  one  million 
dollars,  redeemable  in  25  years.  A  late  number  of  the 
London  Mercantile  Journal  says:  'so  abundant  has  money 
become  that  discounts  in  some  cases  have  been  obtained  at 
the  extreme  low  rates  of  1^  per  ct.  per  annum.'  The  current 
rate  is,  however,  2  and  2|  per  cent.  Certainly  if  money  is 
so  plenty  in  London,  it  could  be  borrowed  for  four  cents,  in- 
cluding brokerage  and  all  expenses.  The  money  could  be 
deposited  in  the  new  state  bank  subject  to  the  order  of  the 
treasurer  of  the  State  countersigned  by  the  comptroller. 

"The  contracts  on  the  railroad  when  executed  and  ap- 
proved by  the  chief  engineer,  would  be  certified  by  him  and 
the  commissioner  or  commissioners,  presented  to  the  comp- 
troller and  treasurer,  who  would  take  receipts  and  issue 
drafts  on  the  State  bank  for  the  amount.  The  engineers 
and  commissioners  to  be  debarred  by  severe  penalties  from 
any  interest  directly  or  indirectly  in  any  contracts  to  be  exe- 
cuted on  the  railroad.  The  legislature  could,  by  joint  ballot, 
appoint  one  or  three  commissioners  to  superintend  the  con- 
struction of  said  great  central  railroad ;  with  such  compen- 
sation as  would  command  men  of  unquestioned  talent  for 

dent  of  Beaufort.  At  any  rate  the  first  and  second  so  well  represent  Mr.  More- 
head  that  it  is  possible  it  was  his  custom  to  spend  a  part  of  his  summers  there; 
they  serve  well  for  illustration  of  the  best  thought  of  this  early  period.  Dr.  J. 
Allison  Hodges,  born  on  the  Lower  Cape  Fear  river,  tells  the  writer  that  it  was 
the  custom  of  such  families  to  be  at  the  shore  together  one  month  of  summer 
and  at  the  mountains  another  month,  so  that  it  is  entirely  possible  that  Mr. 
Morehead  had  "lived"  there,  in  that  sense,  for  many  years. 


136  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

such  an  important  work.  Then  let  the  great  work  be  im- 
mediately commenced,  and  prosecuted  with  all  possible 
energy  to  its  final  completion.  While  it  was  going  on,  the 
citizens  of  Wilmington  and  Newbern,  with  the  aid  of  two- 
fifths  subscribed  by  the  state,  could  push  forward  their 
branches  to  connect  with  the  central  road,  probably  at  Tren- 
ton. Wilmington,  which  is  the  second  best  sea-port  in 
North  Carolina,  would  thus  by  a  branch  of  60  miles  be  con- 
nected with  the  main  road  and  Newbern  by  a  branch  of  20 
miles  in  length.  Then  would  the  farmers  of  our  state  who 
are  the  main  pillars  of  society  have  a  choice  of  the  markets 
of  Beaufort,  Wilmington  and  Newbern. 

"Beaufort  is  as  healthy  as  any  sea-port  in  the  United 
States.  In  this  respect  it  is  far  superior  to  Petersburg  and 
Norfolk  to  the  north  or  any  sea-port  to  the  south  of  this." 
And  he  devotes  a  remarkable  paragraph  to  this  feature,  after 
which  he  details  the  profit  of  the  road,  the  advantages  in 
fresh  foods  from  a  distance,  like  sea-foods,  similar  branches 
like  those  to  Wilmington  and  Newbern,  the  completion  of 
road  and  branches  as  they  proceeded  westward,  the  develop- 
ment of  one  great  port,  steamship  lines  abroad  and 
consequent  commercial  development.  The  two  letters  are 
strikingly  predictive  of  what  the  Greensboro  statesman  was 
to  actually  undertake  and  persuade  the  state  to  undertake 
also. 

These  July  operations  were  followed  on  August  13th 
[1834]  by  a  discussion  at  a  public  meeting  in  Greensboro 
held  under  the  auspices  of  the  Raleigh  Internal  Improvement 
Committee  of  the  previous  November,  of  which  Mr.  More- 
head  had  been  appointed  a  member,  but  it  was  ineffective. 
After  election,  however,  a  Greensboro  meeting  was  held  on 
the  15th  of  August  in  the  Presbyterian  Church  to  listen  to 
the  successful  candidates  at  the  late  election  talk.  And 
although  John  Motley  Morehead  was  neither  a  successful 
nor  a  defeated  one,  he  was  called  upon ;  and  it  became  prac- 
tically the  signal  for  his  re-entry  into  public  life.  "He  said 
he  appeared  before  them  in  a  character  different  from  that 
in  which  his  predecessors  had  presented  themselves.  He 
was  neither  a  candidate  elected^  nor  a  candidate  beaten, 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  137 

but  as  the  town  was  already  sufficiently  represented,  he  had 
stepped  forward  as  a  candidate  for  the  country.  He  was 
very  sorry  that  questions  of  importance  were  always  pre- 
sented to  the  consideration  of  the  people,  when  they  were 
disqualified,  by  excitement,  for  deciding  correctly.  It  was 
not  the  proper  way  for  candidates  to  vindicate  their  con- 
flicting sentiments  among  the  people  just  before  the  election ; 
because  each  one  would  have  his  personal  favorites,  who 
would  go  for  them,  principle  or  no  principle.  Hence  the 
result  of  an  election  was  no  test  of  any  principle. 

"He  maintained  that  it  was  not  for  candidates  to  say 
what  they  were  in  favor  of ;  but  it  was  the  proper  business 
of  the  people  to  elect  men  who  were  intelligent,  firm  and 
untrammelled ;  to  consult  together  and  determine,  among 
themselves,  what  they  wanted  done,  and  then  command  their 
servants  to  perform  it!  He  never  had  any  confidence  in 
anything  that  a  candidate  might  say,  either  about  principle  or 
policy — as  his  object  was  to  say  anything  that  might  advance 
his  hopes  of  success. 

"He  therefore,  as  one  of  the  people,  feeling  no  interest 
in  the  matter  but  what  ought  to  be  felt  by  every  citizen  in  the 
State,  called  upon  them  to  assemble  at  the  Court  House  in 
this  place,  on  the  Tuesday  of  November  Court,  to  take  into 
consideration  the  subject  of  Internal  Improvement;  and 
either  determine  upon  some  plan  proper  to  be  pursued,  or 
else  put  the  matter  forever  at  rest.  He  said  every  man  who 
ever  had  a  dollar,  or  whoever  expected  to  have  a  dollar,  or 
whoever  expected  his  children  to  have  a  dollar,  ought  to  at- 
tend this  meeting,  that  all  information  on  the  subject  might 
be  thrown  together  in  one  common  stock,  for  the  benefit  of 
all ;  and  that  an  aggregate  of  public  sentiment  might  be  made 
out  as  a  guide  to  our  Representatives. 

"Mr.  Morehead  was  cheered  by  the  people  in  a  spirit 
which  clearly  indicated  their  hearty  approbation  of  the 
course  he  had  proposed,  and  we  hope  that  every  man,  rich 
and  poor,  learned  and  unlearned,  will  make  up  his  mind  to 
attend  on  that  day,  in  order  that  the  question  may  be 
fairly  settled,  so  far  as  this  county  is  concerned.  We  know 
the  question  is  one  of  vital  importance.     If  it  be  for  the 


138  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

interest  of  the  State  to  improve  it  by  Railroads,  it  ought  to 
be  known,  and  the  work  commenced ;  if  otherwise,  the 
project  ought  to  be  promptly  met  and  put  down.'" 

This  meeting  was  held  on  November  15th,  and  it  was  so 
well  attended  and  considered  of  such  importance  that  the 
Court  adjourned  for  it.  The  occasion  was  one  of  the  most 
important  in  the  history  of  the  state,  for  it  virtually  became 
the  announcement  of  a  new  leader  with  a  definite  program, 
from  which  he  was  never  to  deviate  and  in  which  he  was 
destined  to  lead  his  state  to  its  adoption.  With  a  long  and 
powerful  address  he  introduced  a  set  of  resolutions  de- 
signed to  definitely  instruct  the  representatives  of  Guilford 
county  just  what  to  do,  as  he  had  proposed  doing  in  the 
previous  meeting.  They  are  so  important  that  they  are 
here  given  in  full: 

"Resolved,  that  the  spirit  of  Internal  Improvement, 
which  pervades  every  State  in  the  Union,  should  not  be 
permitted  longer  to  slumber  in  this  State ;  and  that  it  is  the 
duty  which  our  State  owes  to  herself  and  to  her  citizens, 
forthwith  to  arouse  that  spirit,  and  to  put  it  into  energetic 
and  successful  action. 

"Resolved,  that  the  State  contains  within  herself  the 
elements  of  a  great  and  powerful  State,  in  the  mildness  of 
her  climate,  the  fertility  of  her  soil,  the  variety  of  her  pro- 
ductions, the  exhaustless  stores  of  her  innumerable  mines 
and  minerals,  and  in  the  intelligence,  industry  and  patriot- 
ism of  her  citizens ;  and  that  nothing  is  wanting  to  bring 
these  elements  into  immediate  action,  but  a  system  of  wise 
and  liberal  legislation,  by  which  the  energies  of  her  most 
enterprising  sons  shall  cease  to  aggrandize  other  States, 
by  emigration. 

"Resolved,  that  this  State  has  one  of  the  best  harbors 
in  Beaufort  harbor,  south  of  the  Chesapeake;  and  that  a 
Railroad,  from  that  place  to  the  city  of  Raleigh,  should  be 
forthzvith  commenced  by  the  State  herself;  that  she  has 
the  means  to  execute  this  zvork  speedily;  that,  by  the  exe- 


1  Quoted    from    the    Greensboro    Patriot   by    the    Raleigh    Register    of    2nd 
Sept.,  1834. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  139 

cution  of  the  work,  all  her  citizens — even  the  most  ignorant 
and  narrozv  minded — must  become  convinced  of  the  practi- 
cability and  utility  of  such  improvements^ 

''Resolved,  that  by  the  construction  of  this  Road,  access 
will  be  opened  from  the  interior  to  our  best  harbor ;  facilities 
and  powerful  inducements  will  be  offered  to  individuals, 
to  invest  their  capital  in  the  construction  of  lateral  roads  to 
Newbern,  Wilmington,  and  other  places,  and  the  extension 
of  that  road  westwardly,  through  the  center  of  the  State. 

"Resolved,  that  a  steamboat  navigation,  if  practicable, 
should  be  opened  through  the  Club-foot  and  Harlow's  Creek 
Canal  between  the  waters  of  Beaufort  harbor  and  the  waters 
of  Pamlico  and  Albemarle  Sounds. 

"Resolved,  that  it  is  the  duty  of  every  State,  in  all  works 
of  general  utility,  to  execute  them  at  public  expense,  or  at 
least,  to  contribute  largely  to  their  execution. 

"Resolved,  that  it  is  expedient  that  a  general  law  be 
passed  whereby  the  State  shall  pledge  herself  to  take  two- 
fifths  of  the  stock  in  any  company  that  shall  or  may  be 
hereafter  incorporated  for  the  purpose  of  internal  improve- 
ment, whenever  individuals  shall  subscribe  and  secure  the 
payment  of  the  other  three-fifths. 

"Resolved,  that  we  view  the  conduct  of  the  Legislature 
of  our  State,  upon  the  subject  of  Internal  Improvement — by 
merely  passing  acts  of  incorporation,  in  which  the  collected 
wisdom  of  the  State  refuses  to  invest  one  dollar  of  the  public 
wealth — as  a  mere  mockery  of  our  wants;  and  as  wholly 
impolitic,  unjust  and  unworthy  the  State,  and  contrary  to  a 
wise  system  of  legislation. 

"Resolved,  that  inasmuch  as  all  the  funds  and  revenues 
of  our  State  are  subject  to  the  disposition  of  our  Legislature, 
we  deprecate,  exceedingly,  that  Manger  policy  by  which 
they  are  hoarded  up,  and  rendered  useless,  while  the  best 
interests  of  the  State  are  starving  for  want  of  their  judicious 
application. 

"Resolved,  That  we  cannot  enough  deprecate  that  system 
of  demagogical  legislation,  which  proclaims  unlimited  con- 

>  Italics  by  the  present  writer. 


140  JOHX  ^lOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

fidence  in,  and  friendship  for  Internal  Improvement,,  mani- 
fested by  acts  of  incorporation,  whereby  individuals  may  do 
what  the  State  should  do — and  whereby  a  miserly  care  of 
the  people's  money  is  attended  with  the  usual  concomitants 
of  all  miserly  acts — degradation,  poverty  and  suffering! 

"Resolved,  That  in  the  opinion  of  this  meeting,  if  each 
American  citizen  had  been  permitted  to  fight  just  as  much 
as  he  chose  for  his  freedom ;  and  each  State  had  not,  in  her 
sovereign  political  character,  declared  her  citizens  a  free 
people,  we  should  have  continued  to  be,  until  now,  the  sub- 
jects of  Great  Britain: — and  it  is  further  the  opinion  of  this 
meeting,  that  our  citizens  must  remain  the  subjects  and 
slaves  of  thraldom  and  poverty,  unless  our  State,  herself, 
shall  again  declare  them  free,  by  adopting  a  system  of  In- 
ternal Improvement  that  shall  bring  into  action  all  her 
energies. 

"Resolved,  That  a  copy  of  the  Proceedings  of  this  meet- 
ing, and  of  these  Resolutions,  be  transmitted  to  our  Rep- 
resentatives in  the  present  Legislature,  with  a  request  to  lay 
them  before  each  House  thereof. 

"Resolved,  That  our  Representatives  be  instructed  to 
vote,  on  all  subjects  of  Internal  Improvement,  according 
to  the  true  spirit  of  the  foregoing  Resolutions;  and  that  we 
shall  hold  them  responsible,  without  specific  instructions, 
for  the  judicious  exercise  of  their  votes  on  all  questions 
relative  thereto. 

"Resolved,  That  the  foregoing  proceedings  be  published 
in  the  Greensboro  Patriot,  and  that  all  Editors  in  the  State, 
friendly  to  Internal  Improvement,  be  requested  to  publish 
them  also.'" 

This  was  the  signal  of  preparation  for  action  on  the 
backbone  question  of  transportation  that  should  follow  the 
almost  certain  reference  to  the  people  by  the  next  Assembly, 
of  the  question  of  a  constitutional  convention.  For  the 
Carolina  Watchman,  early  in  July,  had  said:  'Tf  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly  does  not  submit  the  inequalities  of  our 
Constitution  to  the  people  in  some  formal  mode — we  of  the 

1  Reprint  in  Raleigh  Register,  9th  Dec,  1834. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  141 

West  are  determined  to  go  to  work  without  the  behest  of 
that  body.  We  admit  that  the  experiment  is  dangerous — if 
the  people  were  less  virtuous,  it  would  be  imminently  so — 
but  we  think  the  spirit  of  our  fathers  which  bore  them 
through  the  trials  of  the  Revolution,  is  still  sufficiently  with 
us  to  secure  us  against  the  perils  of  faction.  Mark  it,  my 
dear  Sir,  cost  what  it  will,  the  experiment  will  be  made 
immediately  after  the  rise  of  the  next  Assembly,  if  some 
measure  of  Reform  does  not  pass.  We  are  determined  to 
try  it  before  another  hot  Presidential  contest  shall  come  on 
to  absorb  State  politics.  We  say  this  in  the  very  best 
feeling,  not  as  a  threat,  but  as  a  warning.  We  would  be  glad 
to  avoid  the  alternative,  and  it  is  but  right  that  we  should 
try  to  do  so — for  this  purpose,  we  ask  our  brethren  of  the 
Press  in  the  East  to  repeat  this  caution — for  this  purpose 
an  attempt  at  liberal  concession  will  be  made  by  Western 
members  at  the  next  Assembly — and  then,  if  the  alternative 
is  forced  upon  us,  we  will  go  ahead  !'" 

As  to  the  position  of  the  North  Carolina  Watchman 
amongst  the  press  of  the  commonwealth,  let  an  interesting, 
though  partizan  statement  of  a  powerful  journal  of  that  day 
in  the  western  part  of  the  state.  The  Greensboro  Patriot,  be 
given,  for  Editor  Swaim  was  almost  as  important  a  figure  in 
the  state  press  as  Editor  Gales  at  Raleigh.  "The  Milton 
Spectator  is  already  out  of  the  question ;"  the  statement  pro- 
ceeds, "the  Fayetteville  Journal  is  fluttering  like  a  wounded 
pigeon — the  Rutherfordton  Spectator  has  worked  itself  into 
an  interminable  fog — the  Wilmington  People's  Press  is  sort 
of  Boo!  and  sort  of  not  Boo!  The  Nezvbern  Sentinel 
CLUCKS  now  but  to  hang  its  wings  in  despair  on  the  morn- 
ing of  our  political  resurrection !  and  the  North  Carolina 
Standard  [Raleigh]  'conceived  in  iniquity  and  brought 
forth  in  sin'  will  die  a  natural  death  with  the  extinction  of 
Col.  White's  pursership  in  the  navy.  Thus,  'we  have  met 
the  enemy  and  they  are  ours.'  On  one  side  stands  the 
Raleigh  Register,  venerable  for  its  age  and  consistency;  the 
Star,  once  in  bad  company,  but  now  on  the   side   of   the 

1  Reprint  in  Raleigh  Register,  July  29,  1834. 


142  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

people  and  the  constitution;  the  Oxford  Examiner,  not  to  be 
sneered  at  by  modern  Toryism;  the  Fayetteville  Observer, 
an  untrammelled  asserter  of  truth  and  correct  principles ; 
the  Western  North  Carolinian,  once  tainted  with  the  heresy 
of  nullification,  though  now  threatening  death  and  desolation 
to  the  usurpers  of  imperial  power;  the  Carolina  Watchman, 
like  a  faithful  sentinel,  sounding  the  alarm  at  any  approach 
of  danger;  and  last,  though  not  least,  the  Newhern  Spec- 
tator, scoring  the  trammels  of  party  discipline  and  soaring 
high  above  the  temptations  which  have  led  the  Standard 
into  ways  of  error  and  falsehood,  stands  like  an  everlasting 
pillar  of  truth  in  the  midst  of  a  wicked  and  perverse  genera- 
tion. When  to  these  can  be  added  the  Southern  Citizen 
[Editor  Swaim's  proposed  new  periodical],  with  its  twenty- 
four  ponderous  columns,  and  two  thousand  subscribers, 
the  cause  of  the  people  must  triumph.  Jacksonism  will  go 
down  into  its  socket  and  disappear ;  and  Van  Burenism  will 
pass  away  as  a  dream  in  the  night.'" 

The  significance  of  the  political  upheaval  plainly  to  be 
seen  in  this  picturesque  view  of  the  Carolina  press  is  well 
expressed  by  a  Beaufort  correspondent  of  the  Newbern 
Spectator,  so  highly  praised  by  Editor  Swaim :  "We  are 
generally  Whigs — or  Rebels,  if  you  insist  on  it,  in  this  county 
[Carteret].  We  cannot  and  will  not  support  a  collar  man 
for  Congress.  We  are  in  favor  of  Clay's  Land  Bill — we  are 
in  favor  of  a  National  Bank,  to  regulate  the  currency — we 
are  in  favor  of  the  cause  pursued  by  a  majority  of  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States — we  are  opposed  to  the  Kitchen 
Cabinet — we  are  opposed  to  the  election  of  Martin  Van 
Buren  to  the  Presidency — we  are  opposed  to  the  corruptions 
of  the  Post  Office  Department — we  want  to  see  this  Augean 
stable  cleansed — we  are  opposed  to  the  usurpation  of  the 
Executive,  and  his  violation  of  the  Constitution  and  laws  of 
Congress — we  are  opposed  to  the  union  of  the  purse  and 
the  sword  in  the  same  hand — we  are  opposed  to  the  practice 
of  President  Jackson  of  appointing  members  of  Congress 

1  Greensboro  Patriot,  24th  Dec,  1834. 


MEASURES  FOR  DEVELOPMENT  143 

to  office.     This  practice,  if  not  rigorously  opposed,  will  soon 
destroy  what  small  remains  of  liberty  we  possess.'" 

This  great  wave  of  national  political  tide  was  serv- 
ing to  help  float  both  the  movement  for  a  constitutional 
convention  and  for  railway  transportation.  And  yet  it 
would  be  no  easy  matter,  for  the  alluvial  soil  of  the  east 
was  heavy  upon  the  bottom  of  the  ship  of  state,  and  localism 
was  a  barnacle  not  easily  removed.  Nor  did  John  Motley 
Morehead  of  Guilford  underestimate  these  difficulties  or  ex- 
pect a  commonwealth  to  be  remade  in  a  day.  However,  he 
expected  it  to  be  rebuilt;  and  indeed  considered  the  process 
was  well  under  way. 


^  Reprinted  in  the  Raleigh  Register,  Aug.  S,  1834. 

Probably  it  ought  to  be  added  that  Judge  Gaston's  elevation  to  the  Chief 
Justiceship,  as  noted  in  this  chapter,  was  not  altogether  political,  but  for  the 
good  of  that  high  bench,  as  Judge  Conner  has  shown  in  his  address  on  Gaston. 


VIII 

Revision  of  the  Constitution 

AND 

Transfer  of  Political  Power 

TO 

The  West 

1835 

Probably  the  earliest  reference  in  the  North  Carolina 
press  to  a  new  political  uprising  in  the  nation  was  that  on 
June  10,  1834,  in  the  Raleigh  Register  giving  an  account  of 
a  celebration  at  Alexandria,  Virginia,  on  the  27th  of  May  of 
a  victory  over  the  administration  party  by  a  combined  oppo- 
sition which  everywhere  had  taken  the  name  of  "Whig." 
The  Alexandrians  cheered  the  "Whigs  of  '34"  as  follow- 
ing in  the  footsteps  of  the  "Whigs  of  76 !"  And  the  name 
was  commonly  used  all  through  the  campagn  of  1834  in 
North  Carolina  which  was  to  have  so  much  influence  on  local 
questions  in  the  coming  Assembly  of  1834-35.  The  Whig 
cry  was  no  louder,  however,  than  the  Wilmington  cry, 
through  their  Committee  of  Correspondence  on  June  17, 
1834,  against  the  Raleigh  Convention  program  of  November, 
1833,  which  favored,  as  has  been  seen,  the  North  Carolina 
Central  Railroad  from  Beaufort  to  Tennessee  and  a 
Roanoke-South  Carolina  line,  above  the  granite  falls  of 
rivers,  which  offered  as  great  an  obstacle  to  rail  grade  as  to 
navigation.  This  Wilmington  Committee  defended  their 
port  with  some  important  statistics,  and  it  had  among 
its  members  men  like  General  Edward  B.  Dudley.  Their 
cry  was  against  a  Virginia-South  Carolina  railroad  above 
the  falls  as  permitting  those  two  states  to  "bleed"  North 
Carolina;  "but,"  said  they,  "if  there  is  any  general  plan  to 
be  adopted  by  the  Legislature,  and  to  be  preferred  above 

144 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     145 

others,  we  would  advocate  the  construction  of  a  Railroad 
from  the  port  of  Beaufort  through  Newbern  to  the  city  of 
Raleigh,  thence  to  Fayetteville  and  Hillsboro,  or  in  any 
other  direction  that  may  be  more  favorable,  so  as  to  reach 
the  remote  "west."  They  further  add  that  "after  the  com- 
pletion of  this  zvork,"  they  would  support  any  cross-state 
proposition  if  it  were  generally  desired.  This  was  a  great 
victory  for  the  North  Carolina  Central  people  and  was  made 
possible  in  some  measure,  no  doubt,  by  the  disaffection  of 
Johnston  county  in  favor  of  the  above-falls-Fayetteville 
line  instead  of  the  Wilmington-Raleigh  line.  By  July  15th, 
the  Raleigh  committee  directed  Gavin  Hogg  to  answer  the 
Wilmington  address  and  on  August  12th,  the  Wilmington 
committee  retorted  with  vigor.  This  controversy  became 
essentially  a  Raleigh-Wilmington  one,  because  the  Raleigh 
leaders  of  the  November  Convention  were  accepting  the 
verdict  against  Wilmington  as  a  possible  great  port,  and  had 
cast  their  lot  in  with  Beaufort  and  were  still  trying  to  hold 
the  Roanoke  and  Yadkin  regions.  So  that  so  far  as  Wil- 
mington was  concerned  this  question  was  quite  as  vital  as 
the  new  Whig  politics  or  the  new  constitutional  conven- 
tion. 

The  election  of  the  new  Assembly  in  August  reflected  the 
political  revolution  in  some  measure.  The  Whigs  were 
able  to  elect  the  Speaker  of  the  House,  a  western  man,  but 
the  Jacksonians  elected  the  Speaker  of  the  Senate.  On 
November  18th  [1834],  Governor  Swain,  in  his  message, 
which  was  longer  than  usual,  devoted  first  and  chief  space 
to  the  constitutional  convention,  as  he  said  circumstances 
were  different  from  those  of  last  year.  In  a  most  able,  con- 
vincing historical  as  well  as  logical  and  compromising 
treatment,  he  showed  how  this  system  of  inequality  in  rep- 
resentation inherited  from  our  British  Colonial  status  had 
been  either  abolished  or  drastically  modified  by  every  state 
except  Maryland  and  North  Carolina  and  that  it  did  not 
appeal  to  the  national  convention  of  1787.  He  dwelt  on 
the  desirability  of  limiting  action,  but  that  a  wise  com- 
promise would  win  them  "the  lasting  gratitude  of  posterity." 
Not  to  do  so  would  leave  the  baneful  spirit  among  them 


146  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

that  had  defeated  all  progress  in  wise  and  liberal  legislation 
since  the  beginning.  While  giving  this  subject  first  place 
he  reiterated  his  beliefs  regarding  transportation  and  the 
port  of  Beaufort.  He  also  announced  the  opening  of  the 
Bank  of  North  Carolina.  Probably  the  best  known  men 
in  the  House  were  Graham  of  Hillsboro,  General  Dudley  of 
Wilmington,  Wm.  H.  Haywood,  Jr.,  of  Raleigh,  M.  E. 
Manly  of  Newbern  and  James  Seawell  of  Fayetteville. 

On  the  19th  of  November  [1834],  the  first  motion  to 
refer  any  subject  of  the  gubernatorial  message  was  that  on 
convention  to  a  select  committee,  which  was  announced 
on  the  21st  as  Messrs.  Craige  of  Rowan,  Barringer  of 
Cabarrus,  Haywood  of  Wake,  Outlaw  of  Bertie,  and  Clark 
of  Beaufort  City,  but  on  the  following  day  Graham  was  ap- 
pointed in  place  of  Haywood,  resigned,  making  three 
western  men  to  two  eastern,  showing  that  Mr.  Haywood 
declined  to  play  the  role  of  Justice  as  a  representative  of  the 
capital  county.  The  result  was  as  it  should  be :  the  west 
was  to  have  her  Convention,  but  it  would  be  on  as  con- 
servative lines  as  a  compromise  could  make  it.  On  Novem- 
ber 24th  Mr.  Outlaw  asked  to  be  relieved  and  Mr.  Potts 
of  Edgecombe  county  was  substituted,  not  affecting  terri- 
torial representation.  Chairman  Craige's  committee  made 
a  Convention  report  on  December  4th,  which  passed  first 
reading  and  was  made  the  order  of  the  day  for  a  week 
later.  On  the  9th  Mr.  Manney  of  Carteret  (Beaufort) 
thought  this  a  good  time  to  introduce  a  bill  for  a  railroad 
from  Beaufort  to  the  Tennessee  line  to  take  the  place  of  the 
North  Carolina  Central  bill  which  had  not  been  efifective 
thus  far.  It  was  referred  to  the  Internal  Improvement 
Committee,  and  was  a  bill  ''to  construct  the  Central  Rail- 
road," and  was  evidently  along  the  lines  laid  down  by 
President  Caldwell  at  Hillsboro.  The  political  fight  over 
instructions  to  U.  S.  Senator  Willie  P.  Mangum  prevented 
the  ordered  discussion  of  the  Convention  report,  but  on  the 
ISth  both  the  Convention  and  the  Central  Railroad  bills 
were  set  for  discussion  the  following  week.  It  was  the 
23rd  before  a  discussion  in  committee  of  the  whole  was 
secured  without  definite  result,  and  likewise  on  Christmas 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     147 

Eve;  but  on  the  26th,  it  was  decided  by  a  vote  of  74  to  52 
that  it  should  be  re-committed  to  a  select  committee  of  one 
from  each  Congressional  District — which  would  be  on  a 
Federal  ratio  basis.  This  had  been  proposed  by  Mr. 
Kittrell  of  Anson  and  he  was  made  chairman,  with  Bar- 
ringer  of  Cabarrus,  Weaver  of  Buncombe,  Waugh  of  Surry, 
Cotten  of  Chatham,  Poindexter  of  Stokes,  Haywood  of 
Wake,  Dudley  of  Wilmington,  Pugh  of  Bertie,  Bragg 
of  Warren,  Norcom  of  Edenton,  Whitfield  of  Lenoir,  and 
Smallwood  of  Beaufort  county.  This  gave  six  western 
men  and  six  eastern,  with  Mr.  Haywood  of  Wake,  the 
capital  county,  again  to  be  asked  to  play  the  role  of  Justice, 
and  on  the  27th  they  reported  a  substitute  bill,  which  was 
accepted  by  a  vote  of  68  to  61,  favored  by  the  west,  with  a 
certain  number  of  harmonizing  eastern  men.  Immedi- 
ately following  this  vote  the  east  tried  to  remove  the  pro- 
vision of  election  of  Governor  by  free  white  voters,  but 
it  was  held  in  94  to  35,  whereupon  they  tried  to  remove 
borough  representation,  but  lost  it  by  the  practically  original 
v'Ote  of  68  to  60.  Thereupon  a  Brunswick  representative 
tried  to  open  the  capital  question  by  giving  it  into  the  Con- 
vention's hands,  but  he  was  promptly  overwhelmed  by  a 
vote  of  108  to  19.  It  was  finally  passed  second  reading  and 
ordered  printed  by  a  more  conservative  vote  of  66  to  64. 
On  the  30th,  General  Dudley  ofifered  an  amendment  to  the 
charter  of  the  Wilmington  and  Raleigh  Railroad  which  was 
significant.  On  the  31st,  by  a  vote  of  66  to  62,  the  Conven- 
tion bill  passed  third  reading  and  was  sent  to  the  Senate. 
This  was  a  dangerously  small  margin. 

The  Senate  had  had  a  bill  under  consideration  but  laid 
it  on  the  table  to  receive  the  House  bill  on  January  1st 
[1835]  and  on  the  2nd  began  its  consideration  and  promptly 
made  a  few  slight  changes  and  one  important  one,  namely, 
by  reducing  the  House  membership  limits  to  between  90  and 
120  and  leaving  the  borough  representation  to  the  Conven- 
tion. It  was  then  passed  by  the  narrow  margin  of  31  to  30. 
On  January  3rd,  third  reading  was  had  and  after  many 
efforts  to  amend  it  in  various  ways  it  was  passed  by  the 
same  vote,  31  to  30,  practically  as  it  was,  and  returned  to 


148  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the  Commons.  The  House  took  up  the  amended  bill  on  the 
5th  and  after  a  determined  fight  by  some,  which  was 
resisted  by  a  large  majority,  the  Senate  amendment  was  ac- 
cepted by  the  equally  big  majority  of  86  to  36,  and  the 
Senate  so  informed.  The  House  later  wanted  to  add  a  sup- 
plement providing  that  judicial  salaries  be  not  diminished 
during  continuance  in  office,  and  sought  a  conference  com- 
mittee to  which  the  Senate  agreed,  and  by  the  9th  the  bill 
was  finally  passed  and  provision  made  for  printed  copies  of 
the  bill  for  circulation ;  thereupon  the  Assembly  closed  its 
long  session  on  January  10,  1835. 

It  will  be  v/ell  to  take  note  of  the  leading  features  of 
this  act,  for  it  determines  the  essential  features  of  the  new 
constitution  in  advance;  and  what  is  determined  satisfies 
neither  the  east  nor  the  west.  Thus  it  was  a  compromise 
that  it  soon  became  evident  both  east  and  west  would  ac- 
cept as  the  solution  of  the  half-century  old  controversy. 
After  providing  for  the  modes  of  securing  the  convention 
on  a  House  of  Commons  basis,  it  provided  that  the  people 
should  vote  for  or  against  a  Convention  to  be  bound  by  the 
following  propositions:  1.  A  Senate  of  but  34  to  50  mem- 
bers, elected  by  taxation  districts ;  2.  A  House  of  but  90  to 
120  members,  "exclusive  of  borough  members,"  which  the 
Convention  may  exclude  as  it  will,  the  basis  being  the 
Federal  population,  except  that  each  county  must  have  at 
least  one  representative;  4.  Use  discretion  as  to  free  negroes 
voting,  the  holding  of  both  State  and  national  offices, 
equality  of  capitation  tax,  and  nine  other  provisions,  one  of 
which  was  election  of  Governor  by  the  people,  and  a  mode  of 
ratification.  The  supplement  provided  for  Judiciary  revision. 
The  vote  was  to  take  place  on  April  1st  and  2nd  [1835] 
next;  and  if  favorable  the  Governor  should  provide  for 
election  of  delegates.  Twenty  days  later,  as  if  feeling 
that  his  work  was  done  and  that  with  the  coming  of  the  new 
constitution  all  things  else  would  be  added  unto  them,  in- 
cluding "Carleton's"  Sea  to  Tennessee  railroad.  President 
Joseph  Caldwell  passed  away  and  men  said :  "A  great  man 
has  fallen!"  Contemporary  with  this  event,  also,  the  Ala- 
bama "Whigs"    nominated    Judge    Hugh    L.    White    of 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     149 

Tennessee  for  President  against  the  Tennessee  President's 
candidate,  and  the  "Whig"  movement  was  abreast  of  both 
constitutional  and  transportation  reform. 

While  these  events  were  in  progress,  Mr.  Morehead  was 
leading  public  action  against  the  Jacksonian  Baltimore  Con- 
vention, being  the  chief  speaker  in  a  Guilford  county 
meeting  on  May  19th  [1835],  at  Greensboro,  which  was 
thereby  led  to  denounce  it  by  a  vote  of  93  to  3.  During  the 
meeting  he  twitted  Mr.  Shepperd  on  "Confessing  the  sin"  of 
supporting  the  "powers  that  be,"  meaning  Jackson  and  Van 
Buren,  "as  he  [Morehead]  was  himself  a  sinner  of  the 
same  description  about  that  time ;  but  that  since  then  he  had 
become  heartily  penitent."  He  had  already  spoken  in  other 
counties  with  similar  results.  On  May  13th,  the  editor  of  the 
Greensborougli  Patriot  had  said :  "We  are  anxious  that 
John  M.  Morehead  should  be  in  the  Convention  by  all 
means.  His  interest  is  identified  with  the  west;  and  his 
ability  to  defend  any  proposition  he  may  bring  forward  to 
sustain  that  interest  renders  it  peculiarly  important  that  he 
should  have  a  seat  in  that  body.  ...  In  this  case  we 
need  our  strongest  men — our  heaviest  metal!" 

He  was  again  in  public  life,  and  the  people  knew  what 
he  would  do  in  convention. 

The  meeting  at  the  Guilford  County  Court,  on  the  con- 
stitutional convention,  had  appointed  a  committee  of  ten,  of 
whom  Mr.  Morehead  was  one,  to  address  the  public.  This 
address  was  issued  on  February  25,  1835,  and  among  other 
things,  it  emphasized  the  fact  that  five  western  counties 
named,  with  greater  white  population  than  nineteen  named 
eastern  counties,  had  but  fifteen  representatives,  while  the 
latter  had  fifty-seven ;  that  five  western  counties  having  more 
black  than  white  population  than  sixteen  eastern  counties, 
had  only  fifteen  representatives,  while  the  latter  had  forty- 
eight  ;  that  Guilford  had  a  greater  white  population  than  five 
eastern  counties,  yet  she  sends  but  three,  while  the  latter 
have  fifteen!  Orange  county,  but  slightly  less  in  white  and 
black  population  than  five  eastern  counties  has  but  three, 
while  the  five  eastern  counties  have  fifteen !  Tzvelve  eastern 
counties  paid  only  two-thirds  of  what  five  western  counties 


150  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

paid  the  State  treasurer.  They  showed  that  western  coun- 
ties were  actually  paying  the  salaries  of  eastern  county 
members!  The  new  convention  would  make  a  constitution 
based  on  taxation  and  federal  population ;  and  while  the 
proposed  limitation  of  the  powers  of  the  convention  were 
not  all  that  was  to  be  desired,  yet  the  proposals  were  fair  to 
all,  and  some  things  like  election  of  executive  by  the  people 
was  in  line  with  more  direct  popular  control.  "The  oppor- 
tunity is  now  offered  us  [on  April  1st  and  2nd]  to  put 
ourselves  on  an  equality  with  them  [the  eastern  counties]  ; 
and  to  give  the  west  a  decided  preponderance,  which  it  ought 
to  have  in  the  legislature." 

The  April  election  occurred  and  with  the  result  not  so 
unlike  the  unofficial  ballot  of  near  30,000,  namely  27,550  for 
and  21,694  against,  making  a  majority  of  5856,  with  every 
county  voting,  and  having  votes  both  for  and  against, 
even  to  a  solitary  one  in  Rutherford  or  two  in  Rowan  against 
to  so  few  as  four  for  in  both  Tyrrell  and  Greene  or  five  and 
six  in  Hyde  and  Martin  respectively.  And  the  remarkable 
feature  of  it  was  that  this  majority  vote  of  27,550  was  given 
by  26  counties,  while  it  took  39  counties  to  furnish  the 
minority  vote,  or  13  more  than  the  majority!  The  location 
of  them  is  shown  on  the  accompanying  map.  The  greatest 
number  against  in  any  one  county  was  that  of  Johnston, 
Edgecombe  coming  next  and  Beaufort  and  Wayne  counties 
following ;  while  the  greatest  for  was  Lincoln,  Orange  com- 
ing next  and  Rutherford  and  Surry  following.  Wake,  the 
capital  county,  went  over  2  to  1  against.  Probably  Halifax 
gave  the  greatest  number  for  of  any  eastern  county,  unless 
Granville  be  called  eastern ;  and  probably  Caswell  gave  the 
largest  against,  among  western  counties,  unless  Cumberland 
be  called  western.  Guilford  was  1271  for  to  143  against. 
The  Governor  appointed  May  21st  for  the  election  of 
delegates  who  were  to  meet  in  the  capital  on  June  4th. 
Guilford  County  sent  John  Motley  Morehead  and  Jonathan 
Parker. 

Government  House,  the  temporary  capitol  at  the  foot 
of  Fayetteville  street,  Raleigh,  was  the  objective  of  every 
thoughtful  man   in   North   Carolina  as  the  new   delegates 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     151 

gathered  there  on  the  afternoon  of  June  4,  1835.  Editor 
Gales,  of  the  Raleigh  Register,  said  that  "the  people,  laying 
aside  political  feeling,  have  in  almost  every  county,  selected 
their  most  experienced,  most  talented  and  strongest  men — 
men  who  would  confer  dignity  and  honor  on  any  station." 
"It  may  be  said,"  he  asserted  in  the  issue  of  June  9th, 
"without  the  fear  of  contradiction,  that  the  Convention,  as 
a  body,  will  not  suffer  by  comparison  with  any  similar 
assemblage  in  the  Union,  which  has  preceded  it."  Here 
came  the  venerable  Nathaniel  Macon  of  Warren,  now  com- 
ing probably  to  his  last  great  public  service,  as  he  had  come 
to  his  first,  when  the  place  was  merely  "Wake  Court  House," 
in  178L  Craven  sent  Judge  William  Gaston  and  Greene 
sent  Richard  Dobbs  Spaight.  Governor  John  Branch  came 
from  Halifax,  General  Alfred  Dockery  from  Richmond, 
Governor  Swain  from  Buncombe,  Calvin  Graves  from 
Caswell,  Charles  Fisher  of  Rowan,  General  Alexander  Gray 
of  Randolph,  Judge  Henry  Seawell  of  Raleigh,  D.  M.  Bar- 
ringer  of  Cabarrus  and  others  of  like  character. 

Even  before  permanent  organization  was  effected,  Judge 
Gaston,  as  often  before,  became  the  voice  of  a  great 
majority,  86  to  22,  to  enter  upon  the  work  in  the  spirit 
of  the  Assembly's  limitations  of  it,  now,  by  endorsement, 
the  people's  limitations,  also.  Thereupon  the  patriarchal 
Macon  was  unanimously  chosen  President  of  the  Conven- 
tion. Mr.  Morehead's  first  effort  was  on  June  5th,  desiring 
to  economize  in  printing,  and  Mr.  Fisher  supported  him  and 
he  won  his  point  of  election  of  a  Convention  printer  and 
Gales  and  Son,  of  the  Raleigh  Register,  were  chosen.  He 
then  offered  resolutions  assigning  different  subjects  of  the 
Act  to  select  committees,  but  differing  ideas  upon  the 
matter  led  to  adjournment  and  to  use  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church  for  a  future  meeting  place.  The  idea  of  Weldon 
Edwards  of  a  Procedure  com.mittee  as  first  in  order  was 
offered  as  similar  to  Virginia  and  New  York  plans,  while 
some  preferred  a  Committee-of-the-whole  plan  used  in  the 
national  constitutional  convention ;  but,  by  a  vote  of  64  the 
Edwards  plan  failed  and  Morehead  again  called  up  his  plan ; 
and  Judge  Gaston  again  became  a  decisive  factor  and  actually 


152  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

secured  the  adoption  of  the  Edwards  resolution,  and  More- 
head  as  well  as  Gaston,  Edwards,  Fisher  and  others  active 
in  the  matter  were  appointed  on  the  Congressional  District 
committee  of  thirteen.  This  occurred  during  the  first  ses- 
sion in  the  Presbyterian  Church,  a  brick  structure  on  the 
site  of  the  present  one  at  the  southwest  corner  of  Capitol 
Square,  of  which  Rev.  Dr.  McPheeters  was  pastor. 

Before  Judge  Gaston  made  the  report  of  the  Procedure 
committee,  some  discussion  was  had  on  whether  visitors 
should  be  allowed  elsewhere  than  in  the  galleries,  then  the 
report  proceeded  to  provide  for  committees  much  as  Mr. 
Morehead  had  proposed:  1.  On  representation  in  Assem- 
bly ;  2.  On  processes  of  amendment,  ratification  and 
ordinances ;  3.  On  borough  representation ;  4.  On  vote  of 
free  negroes;  5.  On  holding  both  state  and  national  offices ; 
6.  On  capitation  tax  of  white  and  slave ;  7.  On  militia  and 
local  justices'  selection  and  removal;  8.  Assembly  mode  of 
election  of  officers ;  9.  On  the  32nd  article ;  10.  Assembly 
vacancies ;  11.  On  frequency  of  Assembly  meetings  and  elec- 
tion of  Secretary  of  State;  12.  On  gubernatorial  election; 
13.  On  Attorney  General's  election;  14.  On  judicial  im- 
peachment; 15.  On  local  Justices'  disqualification;  16.  On 
judicial  disabilities  ;  17.  On  judicial  salaries  ;  18.  On  private 
legislation;  and  19.  On  confining  Judges  elected  to  judicial 
offices  only,  while  still  on  the  bench.  At  this  point  occurred 
that  invariably  interesting  pair  of  proposals :  attacking  all 
subjects  alike  vs.  first  selecting  the  simple  great  subjects 
in  committee  of  the  whole.  This  latter  was  proposed  by 
Governor  Branch,  and  others  brought  up  almost  all  the 
various  methods  so  familiar  to  students  of  the  convention 
of  1787.  On  taking  up  the  first  resolution,  however,  an 
eastern  member  tried  to  change  the  Congressional  District 
basis  to  a  judicial  district  one,  and  on  Morehead's  attacking 
it,  it  was  lost  75  to  51,  but  the  committees  were  doubled 
to  26,  instead  of  13,  and  Morehead  was  placed  on  the  Assem- 
bly representation  committee,  and  his  motion  to  meet  at 
10  A.  M.  every  day  closed  the  session  of  Monday,  June  8th, 
at  the  corner  of  Salisbury  and  West  Morgan  Streets. 

An  effort  on  the  9th  to  get  statistics  on  the  election 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     153 

brought  out  some  interesting  facts :  Among  others, 
Governor  Swain  said  the  April  vote,  "thin"  as  it  was  said 
to  be,  was  the  greatest  in  her  history,  with  one  exception — 
the  Presidential  vote  of  1828,  when  it  was  51,776,  while 
that  of  April  was  49,244.  But  on  Wednesday,  the  10th, 
the  Committee  of  the  Whole  took  up  borough  representa- 
tion, for  which  Judge  Gaston  made  the  most  notable 
plea,  and  as  usual  Governor  Swain  brought  out  some 
interesting  history,  namely,  that  it  was  the  course  of  the 
borough  members  which  brought  this  Convention  into 
existence  in  the  Assembly.  He  thought  the  country  would 
not  be  just  to  the  towns;  and  said  he  had  hoped  district 
representation  would  take  the  place  of  county  represen- 
tation, and  so  break  up,  by  district  lines,  an  imaginary 
line  between  the  east  and  west.  These  two  probably 
strongest,  most  liberal  leaders  of  the  Convention,  one  of 
the  east  and  one  of  the  west,  both  for  borough  representa- 
tion, was  a  rather  remarkable  fact,  except  that  one  was 
from  the  largest  town  in  the  state,  and  in  the  east,  and  the 
other  from  the  extreme  west,  at  that  time.  And  when 
Fisher  of  Salisbury  confessed  his  practical  decision  to  vote 
for  abolition  of  borough  representation  had  been  suspended 
by  what  he  had  heard,  one  may  know  the  discussion  was  a 
powerful  one ;  and  his  own  description  of  borough  election 
fights  was,  unconsciously  no  doubt,  one  of  the  strongest 
points  against  them,  for  he  said  it  was  not  true  of  county 
election.  His  conclusion  seemed  to  favor  some  eastern 
boroughs,  but  he  was  against  western  borough  representa- 
tion, and  he  was  from  Salisbury.  Meares  of  Sampson 
county  made  good  points  for  representation  of  marine  bor- 
oughs— in  fact  it  was  Newbern,  Wilmington  and  Fayette- 
ville,  marine  towns,  which  desired  separate  representation 
most.  Of  course  they  would  be  represented  in  the  Senate, 
but  that  was  not  enough.  "The  interests"  of  that  day  were 
in  the  marine  boroughs.  Some  gentlemen  even  advocated  it 
on  the  old  English  basis.  And  then  the  Roanoke  and  Albe- 
marle spoke  up  through  Governor  Branch  and  others,  and 
they  were  against  the  borough.  One  of  them  indeed  said: 
"Halifax,  Sir,  is  gone — Edenton  is  going — and  Newbern  is 


154  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

not  far  behind" — so  their  power  to  vote  did  not  protect  them 
as  boroughs!  Mr.  Toomer  made  a  powerful  plea  for  the 
boroughs,  noting  that  South  Carolina,  Virginia,  New  York 
and  Massachusetts,  in  their  revised  constitution,  retained 
borough  representation.  At  the  end  of  two  days,  a  vote 
on  excepting  the  three  marine  boroughs  was  negatived,  and 
abolition  was  also  negatived,  and  it  was  sent,  103  to  23, 
to  the  committee  of  26  as  it  w^as. 

On  June  12th,  negro  voting  was  taken  up  in  Committee 
of  the  Whole — meaning  of  course  free  negroes.  Mr.  Daniel 
of  Halifax  precipitated  the  question  by  a  resolution  to  have 
them  vote,  if  with  a  freehold  of  $250.  The  greatest  attack 
upon  it  was  by  Mr.  Bryan,  of  Carteret,  who  insisted  that 
freeing  slaves  did  not  confer  political  rights.  "North 
Carolina,"  said  he,  "is  the  only  Southern  State  in  the  Union 
that  has  pcnnitted  them  to  enjoy  this  privilege."  He  in- 
sisted that  "this  is  a  nation  of  white  people,"  and,  whether 
one  agreed  with  him  or  not,  his  was  a  powerful  plea.  In  it 
he  anticipated  almost  all  the  difficulties  that  have  grown  out 
of  this  great  question.  He  didn't  want  North  Carolina  to 
become  "an  asylum  for  free  negroes."  It  was  finally  decided 
by  a  close  vote  of  61  to  58  to  withdraw  the  vote  from  free 
negroes ;  and  on  the  following  day  it  was  taken  up  in  open 
Convention.  Here  again  discussion  was  able  and  vigorous. 
Mr.  ^McQueen  of  Chatham,  drew  attention  to  the  fact 
Connecticut  gave  them  no  vote,  likewise  Ohio.  Judge  Gas- 
ton favored  not  removing  the  vote,  and  Mr.  Morehead 
favored  voting  for  Commons  alone,  with  a  $100  freehold. 
Thereupon  a  vote  was  taken,  66  to  61,  in  favor  of  abrogation 
of  the  vote,  Mr.  Morehead  being  one  of  the  61 ;  and  with  him 
such  men  as  Fisher,  Gaston,  Branch,  Swain,  Seawell,  and 
others  of  like  character.  It  was  plain  that  the  British  and 
probable  French  freeing  of  slaves  in  the  West  Indies  and 
the  occasional  insurrections  had  some  influence  in  the  settle- 
ment of  this  question,  as  well  as  some  northern  movements 
of  this  period — and  yet  it  was  done  by  a  narrow  margin  of 
but  5  votes,  and  the  division  was  not  territorial ;  it  seemed 
to  be  wholly  an  individual  sentiment  or  conviction. 

No  time  was  spent  on  No.  5,  as  all  were  agreed  two 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     155 

offices  should  not  be  held  by  one  person  at  one  time  in  state 
and  nation ;  and  No.  6  on  equal  capitation  tax  was  held  in 
similar  attitude,  but  it  succeeded  in  bringing  out  that  occa- 
sional expression  of  suspicion  that  suggested  an  atmosphere 
of  armed  peace  between  east  and  west;  and  thus  June  15th 
was  ushered  in  with  the  question  of  members  in  each  house, 
in  Committee  of  the  Whole.  This  was  the  vital  point  of  the 
whole  Convention.  "It  has  been  said,"  exclaimed  Spaight  of 
Greene,  "that  unless  the  Convention  would  agree  to  fix  the 
number  of  120  members  for  the  House  of  Commons,  50 
having  been  agreed  to  for  the  Senate,  the  West  would  not 
accept  of  the  Constitution.  A  fair  course,"  said  he,  "would 
be  to  give  the  West  ascendency  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  the  East  ascendency  in  the  Senate."  He  acknowledged 
the  right  of  the  majority  to  rule,  but  said  "there  were  checks 
and  balances  for  the  security  of  the  minority ;  and  when  this 
should  cease  to  be  the  case,  our  Government  would  be  more 
odious  than  the  despotism  of  Europe.  In  the  North,"  said 
he,  "they  have  small  Senates  and  large  Houses  of  Repre- 
sentatives. In  the  South  the  number  of  the  Senate  is  much 
larger,  and  possess  all  the  legislative  power  of  the  other 
House."  He  avowed  that  emigration  was  not  from  North 
Carolina  alone,  but  from  all  eastern  states,  and  was  due  to 
cheap  land  sales  in  the  west.  He  said  there  was  not  only 
an  eastern  and  a  western  interest,  but  a  Roanoke,  a  Cape 
Fear  and  a  Neuse  interest.  Great  differences  were  ex- 
pressed as  to  property  controlling  in  the  Senate,  and  popula- 
tion of  some  sort — whether  white  or  federal  ratio — in  the 
House.  Governor  Swain  answered  him  that  120  for  the 
House  and  50  for  the  Senate  was  the  compromise  in  view 
in  the  Act — which,  by  the  way,  became  the  Magna  Charta  of 
the  Convention — between  East  and  West,  and  he  thought 
this  Convention  had  a  majority  to  carry  out  that  compromise 
in  good  faith.  This  was  what  it  was  for.  It  continued 
through  the  next  day,  too,  and  came  close  to  being  a  question 
of  Counties  vs.  Districts.  It  was  bitterly  fought  on  both 
sides.  Mr.  Bryan,  of  Beaufort  city,  as  usual  clarified  the 
subject,  by  admitting  that  the  East  and  property  was  to 
dominate  the  Senate ;  the  real  difficultv  was  in  the  House, 


156  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

for  any  number  between  90  and  120,  mentioned  in  the  Act, 
would  give  the  East  power  there ;  so  it  w^as  somewhat  imma- 
terial what  number  between  was  taken.  He  praised  Judge 
Gaston's  tabulations,  and  showed  that  the  plan  would  give,  in 
the  House,  six  to  eight  majority  for  the  West,  in  the  Senate 
four  for  the  East  and,  in  joint  session,  four  for  the  West — 
but  he  wanted  three  eastern  boroughs  represented.  Presi- 
dent Macon  occasionally  expressed  himself,  but  as  if  fearful 
of  a  new  Pandora  box.  Mr.  Fisher  of  Salisbury,  saw  fit  to 
answer  his  statement  that  all  changes  in  government  were 
"from  better  to  worse;"  after  which  he  reminded  the  Con- 
vention most  ably,  that  the  assertion,  that  the  West  w^as 
pressing  for  pozver,  was  false ;  they  were  pressing  for  a 
principle  which  would  operate  justly  all  over  the  state.  He 
noted  the  fact  that  the  West  was  homogeneous,  while  the 
east  had  three  sections  always  jealous  of  one  another.  He 
thought  it  immaterial,  what  number  between  90  and  120 
was  taken,  so  far  as  a  majority  to  the  west  was  concerned ; 
it  would  go  there  anyhow,  and  that  was  what  they  were  here 
for!  He  believed  the  east  and  west  division  would  disap- 
pear with  the  new  constitution. 

The  Convention  was  still  engaged  in  the  subject  on  the 
18th,  and  for  the  first  time  Mr.  Morehead  indicated  his  deep 
interest  in  keeping  at  it  until  it  was  settled.  He  was  wisely 
letting  the  East  have  its  say,  for  was  he  not  witnessing  a 
fulfillment  of  his  demands  and  predictions  of  1821  ?  Was 
not  the  battle  already  won,  and  could  not  the  vanquished 
wisely  be  permitted  to  work  out  the  details?  The  Magna 
Charta  Act  and  its  ratification  by  the  people  in  calling  this 
Convention  were  the  real  Constitution  of  1835 ;  it  was  al- 
ready theirs.  Let  the  East  work  out  the  details ;  and  no 
man  was  more  influential  or  able  in  it  than  Judge  Gaston  of 
Newbern.  He  now  made  his  first  great  address  of  the  Con- 
vention. He  showed  how  the  East- West  division  had  arisen 
first  over  location  of  the  capital,  then  the  Seaboard  vs.  the 
West.  This  was  perpetuated  in  a  new  slogan:  "A  new 
Western  county,  a  new  Eastern  one."  Now  it  must  cease, 
in  a  justice  to  the  West,  for  the  People  have  bound  all  mem- 
bers with  an  oath  to  do  so.     "Some  things  we  tnust  do. 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     157 

Some  things  we  may  do.  There  are  others  we  cannot  do." 
He  was  magnificently  interpretative,  giving  that  funda- 
mental conception  of  our  political  science,  which  is  so  rarely 
appreciated ;  and  yet  he  showed  the  deeply  rooted  English 
ideas  of  the  east  on  property  and  limited  suffrage.  Such 
studies  make  one  realize  how  the  new  American  political 
science,  underlying  the  Declaration  and  the  Constitution, 
had,  and  still  has  to  fight  its  way  against  the  antiquated  sys- 
tem of  Great  Britain.  Even  so  great  a  man  and  scholar  as 
Judge  Gaston  took  it  for  granted  that  the  Senate  should  rep- 
resent property,  and  the  ordinary  man  had  no  right  to  vote 
for  it.  The  English  term  "Freeholder"  was  more  sacred 
than  the  Jeffersonian  Declaration  as  to  men  born  free  and 
equal.  He  revealed  the  East's  great  fear  lest  the  West  on 
coming  to  its  own,  should  vote  Eastern  wealth  for  transpor- 
tation. His  analysis  of  the  federal  ratio,  instead  of  white 
vote  only,  was  most  able.  "Slaves  are  human  beings,"  he  re- 
minded the  West.  As  the  Senate  represented  mixed  property 
and  person,  so  the  House  must  represent  mixed  persons  and 
property.  A  slave  is  both  property  and  a  member  of  so- 
ciety, he  said.  Every  Southern  state  had  one  of  the 
federal  ratio  in  the  national  House.  How  could  they  want 
it  less  for  the  State?  The  opposition  to  50  to  120  was 
merely  because  it  was  slightly  different  from  the  old  1  to 
2 ;  but  this  was  merely  because  taxation  made  50  and  popu- 
lation made  120,  if  each  county  was  to  have  at  least  one 
representative.  In  fact,  the  excess  that  120  is  over  65, 
is  the  population  basis,  and  it  is  a  compromise  the  West 
has  accepted ;  the  45  members,  only,  represent  the  popu- 
lation proportion,  and  it  must  not  be  reduced,  so  long 
as  the  Senate  is  50.  Those,  who  would  make  it  100,  would, 
if  Person  and  Robeson  counties  were  Western,  make  the 
House  stand  47  to  53 ;  if  neutral  47  to  51 ;  if  Eastern  49  to 
50 ;  but  with  120  the  first  would  be  55  east  to  65  west — the 
second  55  to  61,  and  the  third  59  to  61.  To  make  it  so  close 
as  100  would  make  it,  was  not  fair  to  the  West  or  to  the 
oath  of  this  Convention.  This  matter  was  settled  and  no 
half-settlement  would  answer,  nor  would  it  be  made. 
"Make  it  right,  so  that  it  may  last."     Wealth  had  many 


158  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEx-\D 

forms,  and  the  West  would  yet  rival  the  East  in  its  posses- 
sion. He  analyzed  the  excess-member  question  ably,  but  re- 
minded them  that  the  Act  settled  the  matter  that  they  must 
go  to  counties  according  to  respective  numbers ;  so  that  he 
suggested  county  election  for  counties  not  having  excess, 
and  district  for  those  having  excess.  Judge  Gaston  closed 
with  a  beautiful  comment  on  North  Carolina,  but  he  made 
one  statement  that  showed  him  not  to  be  the  man  of  vision 
that  Morehead  was:  "The  laws  of  Nature  forbade  North 
Carolina  from  attaining  great  commercial  eminence,  or 
rivalling  in  wealth  some  of  the  other  States  of  the  Confed- 
eracy." The  method  he  proposed  was  adopted  and  reported 
to  the  Convention — the  product  of  two  weeks'  work,  for  the 
Convention  confirmed  it.  Thus  far  it  was  plain  that  no  man 
was  so  nearly  the  father  of  the  constitution  of  1835,  as 
Judge  Gaston,  so  far  as  its  construction  was  concerned ; 
but  so  far  as  the  voices  that  represented  the  demand  of  the 
West  was  concerned,  the  fathers  of  it  were  Fisher  and  More- 
head  in  1821.  Nothing  had  been  added  in  the  past  fifteen 
years  to  what  they  had  uttered ;  and  this  Convention  was 
constructing  what  was  then  asked  for,  in  the  main. 

The  three  weeks  longer,  that  it  was  destined  to  sit,  would 
have  no  such  important  question  to  settle,  as  the  one  just  de- 
cided ;  and  yet  what  occurred  was  to  be  a  great  and  plainly 
recognized  change  in  the  spirit  of  the  Convention.  The 
chief  bone  of  contention  had  been  removed,  and  the  state 
stood  upon  a  new  basis.  The  West  had  come  to  her  own, 
but  left  the  East,  or  minority,  an  organ  of  self-protection 
in  the  Senate,  just  as  had  been  done  in  the  national  constitu- 
tional convention.  North  Carolina  had  again  endorsed  the 
great  American  doctrine  of  minority  self -protection.  The 
final  vote  on  the  120,  on  the  19th,  showed  that  the  Conven- 
tion stood  75  to  52  for  it — a  very  vigorous  majority;  and 
this  was  no  doubt  due  chiefly  to  Gaston,  the  "Peace-Maker," 
the  role  he,  himself,  avowed  he  wished  to  play.  To  rein- 
force this  settlement,  a  vote  of  120  to  4  for  holding  to  50 
for  the  Senate  was  had,  and  all  doubt  removed  as  to  the 
vitality  of  the  settlement. 

The    biennial    meeting   of    the    Legislature    was    easily 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     159 

settled  on  the  20th  to  the  accompaniment  of  an  interesting 
Jeremiad  by  President  Macon,  to  whose  venerable  mind  the 
course  of  the  Convention,  and  especially  of  Judge  Gaston 
were  anathema.  It  was  therefore  most  interesting  to  see 
the  new  order  recognized  promptly,  on  Monday  the  22nd, 
by  making  Mr.  Morehead  chairman  of  Committee  of  the 
Whole.  The  biennial  matter  was  again  fought  when  it 
was  attached  to  the  original  resolution  on  representation, 
but  again  confirmed  by  a  vote  of  85  to  35.  Then  came  that 
sensitive  subject,  borough  representation,  on  the  24th,  and 
it  was  fought  over  for  two  days,  but  the  "Peace-Maker," 
although  followed,  in  wanting  representation,  by  such  men 
as  Fisher  and  Morehead,  lost  his  battle  73  to  50 — practically 
the  same  majority  that  settled  representation  in  general' 

Representation  was  now  fully  settled,  it  would  seem ; 
but  it  was  plain  that  the  Convention  was  in  a  mood  to  leave 
no  dark  corner  of  it  uncleansed ;  and  action  to  that  effect  was 
precipitated  on  Friday,  the  26th,  in  taking  up  Article  32, 
namely,  the  subject  of  religious  disabilities  in  office-holding 
as  most  thought,  of  Roman  Catholics  and  other  non- 
Protestants.  Mr.  Fisher,  of  Rowan,  was  called  to  the 
chairmanship  of  Committee  of  the  Whole.  This  Article, 
for  sixty  years,  had  been  essentially  obsolete,  for  Catholics 
held  both  legislative  and  judicial  offices;  indeed  the  "Peace- 
Maker"  of  this  very  Convention  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  and 
as  some  would  say,  "the  noblest  Roman  of  them  all ;"  but, 
essentially  obsolete  as  it  was,  profound  sentiment  surrounded 
it  in  many  quarters.  It  was  a  theme  for  flights  of  oratory, 
and  men  like  Weldon  Edwards  of  Warren,  Bryan  of  Beau- 
fort city,  President  Macon,  Shober  (the  Moravian)  and 
Rayner  took  advantage  of  it,  eloquently.  This  was  the  one 
theme  on  which  President  Macon  could  see  the  constitution 
changed  and  not  be  from  "better  to  worse."  To  one  man 
on  this  floor  in  the  Presbyterian  Church  at  the  south- 
west corner  of  capitol  square,  it  was  a  personal  question, 


"^  A  very  interesting  suggestion  is  made  by  A.  B.  Andrews,  Esq.,  of 
Raleigh,  that  it  was  the  Roanoke  valley — meaning  the  lower  Roanoke — which 
punished  the  marine  boroughs  by  taking  away  representation,  for  aiding  the 
West  to  get  a  new  constitution.  The  favor  of  such  men  as  Fisher  and  Morehead 
to  the  boroughs  gives  ground  for  its  plausibilitj-. 


160  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

probably  more  than  to  any  other — a  man  now  on  the  highest 
bench  in  the  state,  the  man,  who,  at  this  moment,  was  doing 
more  than  any  other  one  man  to  construct  this  new  consti- 
tution, namely,  its  avowed  "Peace-Maker,"  Judge  William 
Gaston  of  Newbern.  At  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  day  in 
Committee  of  the  Whole  he  began  an  address  that  must 
ever  be  considered  a  classic  in  constitutional  annals.  He 
showed  that  the  article  was  inconsistent  with  the  Bill  of 
Rights  and  did  not  forbid  Catholics  from  holding  office,  ac- 
cording to  the  most  careful  thought  of  thoughtful  men.  The 
article  was  not  understood,  as  it  was,  nor  could  it  be; 
let  it  be  made  plain,  whatever  it  was  to  mean,  and  he  would 
abide  by  it.  His  idea  was  that  its  meaning  hung  on  positive 
denial  of  truths  of  the  Protestant  religion.  It  has  been  held 
to  disqualify  Atheists,  Deists,  Jews,  Catholics,  Quakers, 
Mennonites,  and  Dunkards,  at  least.  The  Convention  is  di- 
rected to  make  it  plain.  His  historical  treatment  was  superb. 
He  noted  how  Maryland,  Rhode  Island,  and  Pennsylvania 
were  "the  only  countries,"  before  the  Revolution,  in  which 
religious  equality  was  established,  and  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  and  Union  made  it  all  but  universal  among 
the  States,  North  Carolina  alone  having  the  sole  relic  in 
Article  32.  He  insisted  that  as  a  Roman  Catholic  he  owed 
"no  allegiance  to  any  man  or  set  of  men  on  earth,  save  only 
to  the  State  of  North  Carolina,  and,  so  far  as  she  has  parted 
with  her  sovereignty,  to  the  United  States  of  America." 
His  plea  to  the  West,  which  stood  for  equal  representation 
was  most  earnest,  and  he  closed  with  a  plea  for  full  free- 
dom. Many  more  speakers  followed  him  on  July  1st,  the 
last  one,  except  a  word  from  Governor  Swain,  being  Mr. 
Morehead, 

The  Guilford  delegate  said  he  should  have  remained 
silent,  except  that  such  censure  had  been  passed  on  all  who 
would  retain  the  article.  "Because  we  are  in  favor  of  re- 
taining in  the  Constitution  something  like  a  Test  for  office, 
we  are  charged  with  bigotry  and  illiberality.  In  every 
Constitution,"  said  he,  "certain  qualifications  are  made  neces- 
sary for  office.  In  the  amendments  proposed  by  this 
Convention   to   the   Constitution,   certain   qualifications  are 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER      161 

provided  for  the  members  of  both  Houses,  and  why  not  place 
some  guard  against  inroads  on  the  religion  of  our  country? 
We,  the  other  day,  refused  to  a  class  of  freemen  the  right  of 
voting,  because  the  color  of  their  skin  happened  to  differ 
from  ours.  Why  was  that  done?  Not  because  it  was  just, 
but  because  it  was  expedient.  But  when  we  prefer  keeping 
a  guard  upon  our  religious  rights  in  the  Constitution,  we 
are  called  illiberal  bigots,  fanatics,  etc."  Mr.  Morehead 
could  not  "say  he  was  a  Christian,  because  he  made  no  pro- 
fession to  be  such ;  but  he  was  as  free  from  bigotry  and 

fanaticism  as  anyone.  If  no  care  is  to  be  taken  to 

preserve  the  sanctity  of  Religion  in  our  country,  why  keep 
up  the  custom  of  administering  oaths?  Why  administer  an 
oath  to  an  Atheist?  He  would  not  be  bound  by  it."  It  had 
been  said  that  there  were  no  such  beings  in  the  country.  He 
believed  there  were  many  such.  He  was  therefore  in  favor 
of  retaining  the  section  in  question.  If  any  amendments 
were  made  to  it,  he  should  prefer  that  offered  by  the  gentle- 
man from  Wilkes,  and  now  under  consideration.  He  agreed 
with  the  gentleman  from  Cumberland  (Mr.  Toomer)  that  it 
had  been  settled  by  the  highest  authority,  that  the  32nd 
Article  did  not  exclude  Roman  Catholics  from  office,  since 
the  General  Assembly  had  recently  selected  a  distinguished 
gentleman  of  that  profession  to  till  one  of  the  highest  offices 
on  our  Judicial  Bench.  He  had  been  admitted  to  his  seat 
without  a  single  whisper  of  objection  from  any  quarter,  but 
on  the  contrary,  with  the  general  approbation  of  the  whole 
country.  Mr.  Morehead  added  that  he  wished  every  man 
in  North  Carolina  could  have  heard  the  able  defence  and  ex- 
planation which  the  gentleman  from  Craven  (Mr.  Gaston) 
had  given  to  the  Convention,  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Re- 
ligion. He  wished  it,  because  he  was  satisfied  that  it  had 
been  greatly  misrepresented  and  misunderstood.  He  knew  it 
was  generally  believed  in  the  part  of  the  country  in  which  he 
was  best  acquainted,  that  the  Catholics  here  owned  allegiance 
to  the  Pope.  He  was  glad  to  hear  this  positively  contra- 
dicted by  the  gentleman  from  Craven.  He  would  add 
another  remark  in  relation  to  what  had  fallen  from  the 
gentleman  from  Buncombe  some  days  ago,  in  relation  to  the 


162  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

late  Rev.  Dr.  David  Caldwell,  of  his  county.  Mr.  Morehead 
said  there  never  was  a  truer  Whig  than  Dr.  Caldwell,  nor 
one  that  had  the  good  of  his  country  more  at  heart.  He 
mentioned  several  striking  instances  of  his  ardent  zeal  dur- 
ing the  Revolutionary  struggle,  in  evidence  of  this  fact. 
And  Mr.  Morehead,  when  it  came  to  a  vote  on  substituting 
"Christian"  for  "Protestant,"  was  in  the  minority  of  51  to 
74,  along  with  Governor  Branch,  General  Dockery,  Spaight 
of  Greene  County,  Judge  Seawell,  Judge  Toomer  of  Fayette- 
ville,  and  others  of  like  standing.  Judge  Gaston  had  won 
again.  Even  so,  however.  Judge  Gaston  was  voting  to  keep 
Jews  and  Atheists  out  of  office,  and  it  was  extremely  proba- 
ble that  this  would  occur  to  some  as  unjust,  before  the 
Convention  rose. 

July  2nd  was  a  scarcely  less  auspicious  day  than  the  26th 
of  June  had  been,  for  the  question  was  then  raised  as  to 
whether  the  distrust  of  the  people  and  distrust  of  the  Execu- 
tive shown  in  the  old  constitution  was  to  stand.  The  annual 
choice  of  Governor  by  the  Assembly  indicated  a  purpose  to 
center  all  control  in  the  Assembly,  so  that  the  Governor 
was  merely  a  species  of  executive  officer  dependent  on  the 
legislature.  Here  again  the  old  British  conceptions  were  in 
evidence,  as  well  as  repudiation  of  the  checks-and-balance 
system  between  legislative  and  executive  departments. 
While  it  did  not  affect  power  between  east  and  west,  it  was 
part  of  the  same  political  ideas,  and  was  scarcely  second  in 
importance  to  the  future  of  the  commonwealth  to  that  of 
proportional  representation  itself.  The  West  proposed  to 
elect  the  Governor  in  the  same  way  they  were  to  elect  the 
lower  House ;  for  they  purposed  having  an  executive  in  sym- 
pathy with  measures  the  House  should  secure.  Not  that  the 
Governor  had  veto  power,  for  he  had  not,  but  that  he  should, 
like  the  lower  House,  be  the  voice  of  population  and,  conse- 
quently, the  West.  And  the  curious  thing  about  it  was  that 
it  was  an  eastern — extreme  eastern  man,  Mr.  Jesse  Wilson  of 
Perquimans,  on  the  Albemarle,  who  proposed  the  resolution. 
And  the  very  first  speaker  said  he  had  heard  no  complaint 
against  the  sixty-year-old  mode  of  choosing  the  Governor; 
and  he  was  possibly  right ;  but  the  call  for  population  repre- 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     163 

sentation  in  the  Assembly,  which  would  have  given  the  West 
its  choice  anyhow,  carried  with  it  as  a  corollary,  like  election 
of  the  executive ;  for  both  were  merely  means  to  an  end, 
namely,  the  will  of  the  majority  of  the  people  in  development 
of  North  Carolina.  TJic  defeat  of  development  zvas  the 
motive  of  constitutional  revision,  rather  than  any  senti- 
mental or  academic  political  theories  of  popular  equality ;  so 
great  was  the  hold  of  the  old  British  conceptions  of  political 
representation  upon  the  people.  They  were  far  behind  the 
new  American  political  science  expressed  in  the  national  con- 
stitution, but  not  so  far  as  Pennsylvania  had  been  before 
their  constitution  of  1790.  This  latter,  the  work  chiefly  of 
James  Wilson,  chief  father  of  the  national  constitution  and 
first  to  present  the  new  political  science,  as  a  science,  had 
been  formed  on  the  new  science;  and  all  that  great  body 
of  settlers  in  western  North  Carolina  who  came  from  that 
state  after  1790  had  those  ideas.  That  they  influenced  the 
thought  of  the  west  there  can  be  no  doubt.  In  this  particular 
question,  however.  North  Carolina  was  no  doubt  somewhat 
influenced  by  her  daughter,  Tennessee,  who  had  in  her  recent 
constitutional  revision  done  the  same  thing.  Indeed  the 
first  speaker,  Mr.  Daniel  of  Halifax,  said  he  had  lately  met  a 
Tennessean  "who  said  that  two  Candidates  were  travelling 
through  the  State  on  an  electioneering  campaign,  at  expense 
and  trouble  to  themselves,  and  to  the  great  annoyance  of  the 
People,"  and  he  hoped  not  to  see  such  a  phenomenon  in 
North  Carolina.  He  of  course  could  not  know  that  there 
were  members  present  then  who  should  soon  be  doing  that 
very  thing  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  State.  He 
cited  Pennsylvania,  New  York  and  Massachusetts  as  warn- 
ings. 

Others  followed :  President  Macon  said  that  a  Governor 
that  could  do  no  more  than  a  North  Carolina  executive  was 
of  not  enough  importance  to  bother  about  it ;  but  if  he  had 
a  veto  power,  as  many  have,  he  thought  the  People  ought 
to  elect  him.  Some  feared  that  the  only  question  people 
would  ask  would  be :  'Ts  he  an  eastern  or  a  western  man?" 
Judge  Gaston  recognized  the  inseparableness  of  this  and  the 
new  House  basis,  and  its  inevitableness.     He  also  noted  the 


164  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

utter  absence  of  power  in  the  "Old  North  State's"  execu- 
tive ;  he  was  merely  and  strictly  executive,  with  neither 
appointive  or  veto  powers,  and  so  to  vote  for  such  an  office 
was  no  great  privilege,  that  60,000  voters  should  bother 
about:  it  would  be  dififerent  if  he  had  power.  He  dreaded 
the  election  machinery.  He  thought  it  broke  the  compro- 
mise between  east  and  west,  because  it  would  compel  free 
white  voting,  not  the  federal  ratio.  Judge  Gaston  again  lost, 
74  to  44,  almost  the  usual  majority;  and  with  him  were  men 
like  Bryan,  Edwards,  Macon,  Seawell,  Toomer  and  others  of 
like  standing. 

On  July  3rd,  the  Senatorial  districts  and  House  election 
arrangements  prepared  by  a  committee  were  accepted,  and  it 
was  decided  to  keep  at  work  on  the  4th,  on  which  day,  the 
Volunteer  Militia  celebrated  with  noisy  procession  past  the 
Presbyterian  Church  so  effectively,  that,  while  it  irritated 
Mr.  Morehead,  who  thought  it  deserved  a  reprimand,  it 
actually  resulted  in  persuading  the  Convention  to  honor  the 
day  by  adjournment,  the  day  being  Saturday.  On  the  6th, 
however,  the  future  method  of  amendment  was  taken  up. 
It  was  natural  that  the  West,  which  had  struggled  so  hard  to 
get  revision,  should  want  a  more  easy  mode  of  amendment, 
and  it  was  even  proposed  that  only  majorities  in  two  suc- 
cessive Assemblys,  the  second  elected  on  this  basis,  could 
secure  its  presentation  for  ratification  by  the  people.  The 
Convention's  course  in  turning  down  Judge  Gaston's  position 
three  times  was  beginning  to  raise  his  apprehensions,  and 
since  he  was  so  great  an  instrument  in  securing  the  present 
revision,  he  wanted  a  conservative  amendment  process  for 
the  future.  "In  what  sense,"  said  he,  "ought  majorities  to 
govern?  That  the  deliberate  will  of  the  People  ought  ulti- 
mately to  prevail,  no  one  will  deny ;  but  that  the  temporary 
will  of  the  majority,  which  may  be  produced  by  the  efferves- 
cence of  the  moment,  ought  to  do  ivhatevcr  it  pleases — set  up 
and  pull  down  Constitution  from  day  to  day — no  man  can 
be  so  extravagant  as  to  desire."  In  this  comment,  he  ex- 
pressed the  permanence  of  American  institutions — which 
makes  ours  the  oldest  government  on  earth.  If  the  West 
did  such  a  thing,  he  considered  himself  deceived.     "There 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     165 

are  many  reasons,"  he  said,  "why  the  claims  of  the  West  did 
not  sooner  succeed.  He  owed  it  to  the  East  to  say,  that 
never  until  lately  were  these  claims  fairly  before  the  East. 

Sometimes  the  West  connected  the  removal  of  the 

Seat  of  Government  with  their  claim  for  equal  representa- 
tion— and  sometimes  they  advanced  their  claims  in  connec- 
tion with  other  propositions  which  actually  reflected  on  the 
understanding  of  those  to  whom  they  were  addressed."  He 
said  no  other  state  had  such  loose  provisions.  In  this  he 
won  the  day  for  two-thirds  votes  in  the  Assembly,  107  to  17. 
Mr.  Morehead  astonished  the  Convention  by  a  vigorous 
unequivocal  denunciation  of  requiring  viva  voce  voting  for 
public  offices  in  Assembly,  which  came  up  next ;  but  he  was 
disagreed  with,  82  to  38.  He  was  pleased,  however,  when, 
immediately  thereafter,  July  6th,  Judge  Gaston  suggested 
that  since  the  majority  against  giving  free  negroes  the  vote 
was  so  small,  it  might  be  reconsidered.  Before  the  Revolu- 
tion, he  thought  there  was  hardly  a  freed  negro  in  the  State, 
and  such  as  there  were,  were  mulattoes,  children  of  white 
women,  and  thereby  free.  The  act  of  1777,  providing  for 
control  of  emancipation  plainly  noted  it  as  a  recent  phenome- 
non. A  few  days  since  he  had  seen  the  certificate  of  John 
Chavis,  a  colored  minister,  that  he  had  taken  the  oath  of 
allegiance  at  Mecklenburg,  Va.,  on  December  20,  1778. 
Legislative  acts  entitled  freed  negroes  to  all  rights  of  col- 
ored freemen,  i.  e.,  mulattoes,  sons  of  white  women.  He 
therefore  proposed  an  amendment,  restricting,  but  not  with- 
drawing the  vote.  Mr.  Holmes,  of  New  Hanover,  cited  the 
case  of  San  Domingo,  where  in  1791,  slaves  who  became 
free  through  meritorious  services,  the  removal,  some  years 
later,  of  the  voting  rights  then  conferred  upon  them  was  the 
chief  cause  of  revolution.  A  Perquimans  member  said  no 
free  negro,  in  his  region,  had  ever  been  allowed  to  vote.  Mr. 
Fisher  proposed  a  less  severe  amendment.  Objection  was 
made  that  no  free  negro  was  allowed  to  enter  any  state, 
except  he  give  bond  for  good  behavior,  and  Ohio  forbid 
his  entrance  at  all.  A  vote  would  cause  confusion.  The 
Gaston  amendment  was  voted  down,  64  to   55,  and   Mr. 


166  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Morehead  was  one  of  the  55,  results  not  essentially  different 
from  the  first  vote,  but  more  favorable  to  the  minority. 

Judge  Gaston  made  an  attempt  to  reopen  the  county- 
district  method  of  voting  for  the  lower  House,  but  in  vain ; 
and  then  Mr.  Morehead  brought  up  the  impeachment  article 
which  provided  that  the  Chief  Justice  should  preside,  as  in 
national  proceedings  of  like  character;  but  they  wanted  no 
one  but  Senators  concerned  in  this  judicial  act.  Mr.  More- 
head  did  secure  one  amendment,  however,  namely,  one  on 
holding  state  and  national  offices ;  but  he  failed  in  another, 
namely,  the  abolition  of  private  laws,  and  it  was  Judge 
Gaston's  influence  which  defeated  him.  Mr.  Wilson,  of 
Perquimans,  made  an  impassioned  plea  to  remove  the 
word  "Christian"  before  "Religion"  in  Article  32,  but  in 
vain.  The  general  report  on  form  of  amendments  for 
submission  was  adopted,  81  to  20,  on  the  evening  of  July 
10th.  The  usual  acts  of  courtesy  were  performed  on  the 
following  day,  when  President  Macon  avowed  he  had  never 
witnessed  such  good  order  and  decorum  in  any  body  with 
which  he  had  been  connected,  and  he  expected  this  to  be 
"the  last  scene  of  my  public  life."  With  a  closing  prayer 
by  the  pastor  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  in  which  this 
great  act  of  justice  to  the  West  had  been  consummated, 
the  Constitutional  Convention  of  1835,  for  North  Carolina, 
ceased  to  be. 

In  a  word  what  were  the  results :  1.  Equalized  represen- 
tation ;  2.  biennial  sessions ;  3.  Popular  biennial  election  of 
executives ;  4.  Attorney  General's  term  to  be  limited  to  four 
years ;  5.  No  borough  representation ;  6.  No  vote  of  free 
negroes ;  7.  Viva  voce  Assembly  vote  for  public  officers ; 
8.  Removal  of  Roman  Catholic  disability  to  hold  office, 
definitely ;  9.  Two-thirds  Assembly  votes  for  amendment 
process;  10.  Mode  of  impeachment  of  officers ;  11.  Removal 
of  judges  for  disability;  and  12.  Restriction  on  private 
laws.  The  new  order  of  representation  provided  one  mem- 
ber for  each  of  9  counties,  with  less  than  the  federal  ratio ; 
Brunswick,  Columbus,  Chowan,  Greene,  Jones,  Tyrrell, 
Washington  in  the  east  and  Macon  and  Haywood  in  the 
west.     The  remaining  111  members  are  on  a  ratio  of  5399, 


NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER     167 

that  gave  32  counties  each  one  member,  17  counties  two 
each,  and  7  counties  three  each — not  allowing  for  fractions 
permitting  another  member.  The  latter  counties — those 
given  another  member  on  fractional  excess,  were  24  in 
number:  of  these  15  went  to  the  32  with  one  member, 
while  7  went  to  the  17  with  two  members,  and  2  went  to  the 
7  with  three  members.  These  additional  members,  as  be- 
tween east  and  west,  were  not  very  equal.  The  two 
three-member  counties,  which  thereby  got  four,  were  west- 
ern, Lincoln  and  Orange.  The  seven  two-member  ones, 
getting  three,  were  five  western — Burke,  Chatham,  Iredell, 
Surry  and  Stokes — and  two  eastern — Granville  and  Hali- 
fax; while  on  the  other  hand  almost  all  of  the  15  given  to 
the  one-member  class  were  eastern.  Therefore  only  Lincoln 
and  Orange  had  four  members.  Those  having  three  were : 
Guilford,  Mecklenburg,  Rowan,  Rutherford,  Wake,  Burke, 
Chatham,  Iredell,  Surry,  Stokes,  Granville  and  Halifax. 
Those  having  two  were:  Anson,  Buncombe,  Cumberland, 
Craven,  Caswell,  Davidson,  Edgecombe,  Randolph,  Rock- 
ingham, Wilkes,  Beaufort,  Bertie,  Duplin,  Franklin,  John- 
ston, New  Hanover,  Northampton,  Person,  Pitt,  Sampson, 
Warren,  Wayne,  Montgomery,  Robeson  and  Richmond. 
The  rest  had  but  one  representative.  As  property  was  so 
largely  the  basis  of  the  Senate,  it  was  only  a  question  of  a 
short  time  when  the  West  would  be  equally  dominant  in 
that  body. 

The  Convention  had  barely  adjourned  when  news  came 
of  the  death  of  Chief  Justice  John  Marshall,  whereupon 
North  Carolina  came  out  boldly  and  vigorously  for  the 
Roman  Catholic  "Peace-Maker"  of  the  Convention  as  his 
successor.  It  was  a  premature  wish,  however,  for  it  was  to 
take  over  a  half-century  before  the  people  of  the  United 
States  were  able  to  take  such  an  attitude.  That  the  new  con- 
stitution was  more  his  work  than  that  of  any  other  one  man 
is  self-evident.  That  Mr.  Morehead  recognized  him  as  leader 
is  also  self-evident,  and,  as  a  rule,  supported  him  on  the 
great  committee  of  which  both  were  members.  That  More- 
head  would  have  gone  farther  than  Gaston  is  also  not  to  be 
questioned,  nor  that  he  recognized  that  Gaston  led  Cape  Fear 


168  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

and  Neuse  sections  of  the  east  against  the  Roanoke,  or  the 
commercial  boroughs  of  the  southeast  against  the  planters 
of  the  Roanoke.  A  sub-conscious,  if  not  conscious,  basis 
for  this,  was  undoubtedly  the  Newbern-Beaufort-Raleigh 
hope  for  a  Beaufort-to-Tennessee  railroad.  The  Caldwell 
idea  of  the  west  had  become  the  Gaston  idea  of  the  east,  the 
lever  by  which  the  State  was  to  be  lifted.  That  this  was 
Mr.  Morehead's  objective,  rather  than  any  especially  aca- 
demic ideas  in  political  science,  there  can  be  still  less  doubt ; 
for  this  new  constitution  was  preeminently  a  means  to  an 
end,  just  as  Judge  Gaston  himself  was.  The  statesmanship 
of  the  Murpheys,  the  Caldwells,  the  Fishers,  the  Moreheads 
and  other  western  leaders,  whose  eyes  were  on  the  building 
and  development  of  the  commonwealth,  were  the  real  cause 
of  this  new  fundamental  law.  They  were  the  designers ; 
Gaston  the  chief  builder,  after  their  plans — plans  which  had 
been  forced  upon  him  and  his  eastern  friends  almost  at  the 
point  of  revolution.  And  it  had  been  the  whole  burden  of 
Morehead's  public  life,  his  heritage  from  his  great  teachers 
and  heroes,  Murphey  and  Caldwell.  The  order  for  the  Con- 
stitution of  1335  had  been  given  in  the  West  and  the  general 
design  made  there,  but  its  mechanism  was  built  chiefly  by 
eastern  hands. 

Its  ratification  was  not  to  be  voted  on  until  November, 
so  that  the  general  elections  at  once  overshadowed  all  else. 
The  "Whigs  of  '34"  were  now  merely  full-fledged  Whigs, 
and  were  carrying  the  banner  of  Hugh  L.  White  of  Tennes- 
see against  "Van  Burenism."  It  was  a  period  of  the  rise 
of  the  national  "West"  as  well  as  the  State  "West;"  Ar- 
kansas and  Michigan  were  asking  to  become  states.  The 
growth  of  the  \\'higs  everywhere  was  amazing.  North 
Carolina  was  divided  nearly  equally  between  the  two — the 
idolizer  of  General  Jackson  not  long  since!  General  Har- 
rison's friends  were  becoming  active ;  and  with  this  uprising 
came  also,  in  the  North,  aggressive  propaganda  for  the 
abolition  of  slavery.  These  themes  were  in  the  minds  of 
all  in  November,  when  the  new  Assembly  met  and  the  vote 
on  ratification  was  taken.  This  vote  of  the  people  was 
a  magnificent  proof  of  the  need  for  revision,  for  the  tre- 


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NEW  CONSTITUTION  AND  POLITICAL  POWER      169 

mendous  number  of  39  counties  were  against,  nearly  40 
against,  to  26  for;  and  yet  26,771  were  for  and  but  21,606 
against,  making  5165  majority  for  ratification!  The  only 
difference  between  this  vote  and  that  for  calling  the  conven- 
tion was  that  the  latter  majority  was  somewhat  larger,  5856. 
In  other  words,  the  two  votes  for,  were  27,550  and  26,771 ; 
the  two  votes  against  were  21,694  and  21,606;  and  the 
majorities  5856  and  5165.  The  chief  difference  was  that 
several  hundred  were  so  sure  it  would  win  that  they  did  not 
vote,  while  less  than  a  hundred  were  won  to  the  eastern 
cause.  Therefore,  on  December  3,  1835,  Governor  Swain 
proclaimed  the  new  constitution  to  be  in  effect  from  and 
after  January  1,  1836. 

And  what  was  the  immediate  result?  The  Assembly 
had  its  shortest  session  within  memory,  adjourning  on  De- 
cember 22nd.  Their  most  notable  work  was  to  amend  the 
Wilmington  and  Raleigh  Railroad  act  of  1832,  changing  the 
line  to  run  direct  from  Wilmington  to  the  Roanoke,  leaving 
Raleigh  out ;  for  not  only  Petersburgh  was  running  trains  to 
W^eldon,  below  the  Roanoke  rapids,  and,  by  way  of  the 
Greensville  and  Roanoke,  from  Belfield,  were  running  to  a 
point  above  the  rapids  now  called  Gaston ;  but  a  new  "train 
of  cars"  was  announced  for  December  1st  on  the  way  from 
Portsmouth  to  its  successive  termini  on  the  way  to  Weldon. 
Wilmington,  therefore,  proposed  to  make  haste  and  take 
its  share  from  the  rich  Roanoke.  The  Gaston  terminus, 
therefore,  on  the  Wilmington  people's  leaving  out  Raleigh, 
caused  her  to  secure  incorporation  of  the  Raleigh  and  Gaston 
Railroad  Company,  and  the  Raleigh  and  Fayetteville  Rail- 
road Company.  The  Weldon  Toll  Bridge  increased  its 
capital  to  $75,000,  to  get  ready  for  the  big  business.  These 
were  the  answer  to  the  new  constitution,  of  the  people  of 
Wilmington  and  the  Roanoke,  for  they  expected  the  west 
to  move  for  the  North  Carolina  Central  or  Beaufort  to  Ten- 
nessee railroad. 


IX 

John  Motley  Morehead 

AND 

The  Rise  of  the  Whig  Party 

IN 

North  Carolina 
1836 

Immediately  on  the  close  of  the  Assembly  on  Decem- 
ber 22,  1835,  the  Anti-Van  Buren  or  Whig  members  met  in 
the  House  of  Commons  hall,  at  Government  House,  foot 
of  Fayetteville  Street,  and  resolved  upon  organization  of  a 
party  ticket  to  be  known  as  Wliig.  General  Polk,  of 
Rowan,  took  the  lead  in  this  as  in  the  unofficial  constitu- 
tional convention  of  1833,  although  Col.  Andrew  Joyner  of 
Halifax,  was  made  chairman.  They  nominated  White  of 
Tennessee  for  President  and  formed  a  Whig  Central  Com- 
mittee headed  by  Charles  L.  Hinton,  an  address  committee 
headed  by  General  Polk,  provided  for  county  nominations 
of  a  Whig  candidate  for  Governor,  and  for  county  com- 
mittees of  five  each.  When  these  were  appointed  the  list 
showed  almost  none  of  the  old  leaders,  except  General 
Polk  in  Rowan,  Mr.  Morehead  in  Guilford,  General 
Dockery  in  Richmond  and  a  few  others,  but  its  organization 
was  complete  in  every  county. 

But  whether  Whig  organization,  which  was  almost  as 
vigorous  in  most  other  states  as  in  Carolina,  was  more 
active,  or  railroad  promotion  more  so,  is  difficult  to  say. 
On  January  2,  1836,  Raleigh  held  a  meeting  of  all  those 
interested  in  a  railroad  to  the  Roanoke  terminus  of  the 
Greensville  and  Roanoke  Railroad  at  Wilkins  Ferry,  now 
called  Gaston.  Judge  Cameron,  Charles  Manly,  George 
E.  Badger  and  others  led  the  enthusiasm  and  $150,000  was 

170 


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^  ot  t!ll^l  liuad  are  cuinpteted  and  ready  for 
tilt  Tr;Ll)^pc)l•lallun.  ol  I'ubseiigers  unci  Vioducc. 

H  STiMtn  of  (Cavf$ 


WILL    LEJVE   J'OUTSMOUIII    DAIJA', 

(commencing-  tilis  «l;iy,  Tuesday,  the  firtt 
of  l)<'cemhtu\  at  9  o'clock.  A,  M.)  and  Hrrivo  at 
ii.\UUAUKTVn-.r-T',  (t'le  present  tenirmatiou 
of  the  road,)  to  dinner,  vvhence  |);tssengcra  rtill 
be  cor.voj'cd  in 

TO  HAIilFAX,  N.  €« 

Arriving  in  time  I'ftr  the 
,*Jonllie«s*Sa:ag:es,  via  Raleigh  Ac, 


First  Picture  of  a  Train    in   a 

North    Carolina   Paper 
Raleigh  Register,  15th   Dec,   1836 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  171 

subscribed,  whereupon  the  President  of  the  Petersburg 
Railroad  announced  that  he  was  authorized  to  put  down 
$150,000  for  citizens  of  his  city.  This  made  immediate 
organization  possible ;  but  the  Wilmington  people  were 
equally  in  earnest  and  at  the  same  time  announced  a  sub- 
scription of  $200,000  for  their  road.  The  Gaston  road 
organized  on  February  4th.  Five  days  before,  on  January 
30th,  Raleigh  Whigs  started  the  local  nominations  for  Presi- 
dent, Vice-President  and  Governor  and  determined  on  Hugh 
L.  White,  a  native  of  North  Carolina;  John  Tyler  of  Vir- 
ginia, and  for  Governor,  General  Edward  B.  Dudley,  of  Wil- 
mington. A  general  understanding  existed  among  the  Whigs 
of  the  State  that  there  should  be  unity  on  these  men,  so  that 
the  campaign  should  be  wholly  against  Van  Burenism  and 
Jacksonism,  whose  ticket  was  headed  by  Spaight,  both 
eastern  men,  and  designed  to  divide  the  east,  prospects  of 
which  was  almost  certain. 

On  February  16th,  General  Dudley  accepted  and 
slightly  less  than  a  month  later,  14th  March,  he  was  also 
chosen  President  of  the  Wilmington  and  Raleigh  Railroad 
Company.  The  success  of  the  Raleigh-Gaston  organi- 
zation seems  to  have  made  the  board  change  its  policy 
and  go  to  Raleigh,  for  this  meeting  decided  to  at  once 
begin  work  at  both  ends,  Wilmington  and  Raleigh.  The 
Raleigh-Roanoke  road,  designed  to  go  to  Weldon  from 
Raleigh  was  active  but  not  so  far  successful;  so  that  the 
commitment  of  the  Raleigh  people  to  the  Gaston,  or  above- 
falls  route,  no  doubt  temporarily  influenced  Wilmington 
to  go  to  Raleigh,  with  an  idea  of  heading  off  any  Raleigh- 
Fayetteville  alliance.  The  decision  did  not  last  long,  how- 
ever, chiefly,  it  is  said,  because  Johnston  county  would  not 
subscribe.  This  course  was  stimulated,  too,  by  the  Raleigh- 
Gaston  line  calling  in  8%  on  its  stock  on  June  7th  and 
actually  getting  to  work  on  the  Gaston  end;  and  also  be- 
cause the  Raleigh-Fayetteville  road  was  becoming  active, 
while  the  Richmond  and  Petersburg  and  Richmond  and 
Fredericksburg  roads  were  building  so  fast,  that  Wilming- 
ton feared  lest  the  through  line  |night  be  diverted  west  of 
her  by  Raleigh  activities.     The  fact  that  stocks  of  all  com- 


172  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

pletecl  roads  in  the  United  States  were  above  par  served  to 
make  them  attractive  investment  as  w^ell  as  public  improve- 
ment. The  Hartford  and  New  Haven  was  to  begin  opera- 
tion on  August  15th;  and  48  miles  of  the  Richmond  and 
Fredericksburg  was  in  use  in  November,  with  only  16 
miles  more  to  complete.  The  Raleigh-Gaston  road  had 
35  miles  out  of  Gaston  contracted  for  by  October  and 
would  have  50  before  the  end  of  the  year.  By  November 
the  Wilmington-Weldon  route  was  settled  and  30  miles  sur- 
veyed and  35  under  contract.  They  took  over  the  Halifax 
and  Weldon  road  as  part  of  this  line.  Then  came  a  new 
idea  from  Virginia,  not  unlike  the  Greensville-Gaston 
branch  of  the  Petersburg  to  tap  the  upper  Roanoke  above 
the  falls.  This  was  to  tap  the  still  farther  upper  Roanoke 
and  Dan  valleys  from  Portsmouth  to  Danville,  paralleling 
the  Roanoke,  under  the  name  Roanoke,  Danville  and  Junc- 
tion Railroad  proposed  in  December — a  project  that  was  to 
appeal  greatly  to  Mr.  Morehead's  district,  because  it  would 
be  their  nearest  line,  although  it  would  bind  them  com- 
mercially to  Virginia.  By  this,  the  latter  state,  which 
was  capturing  the  lower  Roanoke  already,  would  capture 
the  back  country  to  the  north,  as  South  Carolina  was  al- 
ready capturing  it  to  the  south  by  water  and  proposing  to 
do  by  rail.  Indeed  so  early  as  1833  a  North  Carolina 
convention  proposed  a  line  to  Louisville  and  Cincinnati 
through  the  mountains  and  now  Charleston  was  actively 
at  work  on  the  Louisville,  Cincinnati  and  Charleston  Rail- 
road and  was  at  this  very  time,  through  her  agent,  attempt- 
ing to  enlist  North  Carolina  in  it,  showing  that  the  Yadkin 
road,  from  Fayetteville  to  Beatties  Ford,  would  make  it  as 
much  a  Wilmington  as  a  Charleston  road,  in  the  east,  and 
be  a  great  thoroughfare  for  the  west.  The  agent's  letter  to 
the  Governor  noted  the  increase  of  commerce  that  was 
bound  to  come  with  passenger  travel.  "Before  the  rail- 
road," said  he,  "was  made  between  New  York  and  Phila- 
delphia, about  80  or  100  passengers  daily  was  the  usual 
number;  now  it  has  increased  to  between  1500  and 
2000.  .  .  .  Between  Charleston  and  Augusta,  a  single 
stage  three  times  a  week,  was  more  than  sufficient  for  the 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  173 

transportation  of  passengers.  Since  the  establishment  of 
the  railroad,  the  average  of  passengers  to  Charleston  has 
gone  as  far  as  500  per  week.'"  This  was  something  that 
would  sooner  or  later  awaken  Wilmington  to  the  mere  first- 
aid  nature  of  her  Weldon  line,  as  a  state  measure. 

During  the  summer,  however,  politics  grew,  what  might 
be  called,  "White  Hot;"  for,  as  Tennessee  had  been  the 
first  to  champion  her  and  North  Carolina's  son,  Jackson, 
and  North  Carolina  and  Pennsylvania  had  been  first  to 
second  that  cause ;  so  now  Tennessee  was  first  to  turn  from 
him  to  her  and  North  Carolina's  other  son,  Hugh  L.  White, 
and  again  the  same  seconds  followed  her!  The  Whigs 
were  growing  as  fast  as  the  new  Washington  monument 
plans,  under  the  leadership  of  ex-President  James  Madison, 
who  died  on  June  28th  in  the  midst  of  them ;  and  the  stars 
in  the  national  flag,  which  would  increase  to  just  double 
the  original  number,  with  the  transformation  of  Arkansas 
and  Michigan  from  territories  to  States.  And  John  Motley 
Morehead,  twice  a  Jackson  elector,  now  became  in  July  a 
White,  or  Whig  elector  from  the  Sixth  District,  and  with 
him  were,  for  the  most  part,  a  new  set  of  leaders.  Judge 
Toomer  of  Fayetteville,  Charles  Manly  of  Wake,  John 
Giles  of  Rowan,  Dr.  James  S.  Smith  of  Orange,  and  others 
equally  new,  so  that  Mr.  Morehead  was  probably  the  best 
known  among  them.  And  the  August  election  gave  Guil- 
ford's vote  to  General  Dudley  for  Governor,  1145  to  only 
475  for  Governor  Spaight,  the  administration  party  candi- 
date. It  was  typical,  for  32  counties,  both  cast  and  west 
almost  equally,  gave  Dudley  31,829  votes,  or  5007  majority 
over  Governor  Spaight,  with  26,822  votes.-  The  east  and 
west  seemed  broken  up  forever !  They  were  both  divided : 
the  coast  counties  from  Carteret  to  Camden  went  W'hig 
almost  without  exception,  and  even  Halifax  and  Northamp- 
ton. The  central  part,  Warren  to  New  Hanover,  went  for 
the    administration,    as    did    the    Charlotte    country,    three 

^  Raleigh  Register,  3rd  Jan.,  1837. 

-  Technically,  when  official  count  was  made,  62  counties  gave  Dudley  33,993 
and  Spaight  29,950,  Chowan,  Gates  and  Burke  not  counted,  for  various  reasons. 
So  that  Dudley's  technical  majority  was  4043.  If  they  had  been  counted,  it 
would  have  been  4729.  The  5007  figures  were  the  actual,  but  not  technical 
votes;  so  that  the  map  has  been  made  from  it,  as  truer  to  the  movement. 


174  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

mountain  counties,  and  three  upper  Roanoke  ones  on  the 
Virginia  line.  Judge  Gaston's  county  went  with  them.  The 
Whig  gubernatorial  victory  was  so  great  that,  when  it 
came  to  the  Presidential  vote,  many  took  it  for  granted 
and  didn't  vote  at  all!'  Over  10,000  Whigs  did  not,  and 
nearly  2000  Democrats,  so  that  White  lost,  21,218  to  24,878, 
a  difference  of  3660.  The  House  of  Commons  was  simi- 
larly affected,  the  Whigs  securing  59  members  and  the 
Democrats  61,  so  that  here,  too,  the  east  and  west  lines  were 
broken  up.  As  Judge  Gaston  had  predicted,  the  national 
lines  in  politics  had  overshadowed  state  lines.  For,  strange 
to  say  the  Whigs  secured  a  majority  of  four  in  the  Senate, 
so  that  with  the  Senate  and  Governor  and  joint  ballot,  the 
Whigs  were  victorious ;  and  there  was  even  a  good  chance 
of  a  tie  in  the  House.  Surely  1836  was  a  year  of  revolution 
in  the  politics  of  North  Carolina!  Mr.  Morehead's  brother, 
James  T.,  was  made  a  Senator. 

When  it  came  to  organization  of  the  Legislature  in 
November,  1836,  it  is  interesting  to  see  how  east  and  west 
still  persisted,  but  under  political  names  of  "Van  Buren- 
ites"  or  Democrats  and  Whigs ;  for  that  central  bulk  of 
Democratic  territory  eastward  from  Raleigh  was  leader  of 
the  one,  and  that  central  bulk  of  territory  west  of  Raleigh 
led  the  Whigs.  And,  although  the  state  went  so  largely 
for  the  Whig  Governor,  General  Dudley  was  an  eastern 
man ;  and  the  smallness  of  the  margins  in  both  Senate  and 
House  enabled  the  east  to  utilize  various  influences  to  their 
advantage.  For  example,  speakership  candidates  in  the 
Senate  were  an  eastern  Democrat  and  a  western  Whig ;  and 
with  only  48  present,  the  two  candidates  not  voting,  gave 
24  for  the  Whig  and  22  for  the  Democrat,  electing  the 
Whig,  and  with  one  vacancy  to  be  filled,  the  Senate  then 
stood,  25  Whigs  and  24  Democrats!  The  House  margin 
was  not  quite  so  small,  but  nearly  so,  properly  61  Demo- 
crats and  59  Whigs,  and  yet  when  the  Whigs  put  up  Wm. 
A.  Graham  of  Hillsboro,  the  west,  against  Mr.  Haywood  of 
Raleigh,  the  east,  they  lost  53  to  60,  showing  that  some 

1  Even  so  the  opposition  majority  to  Van  Buren,  in  the  nation  was  over 
18,000,  which  was  significant  for  the  future. 


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RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  175 

in  both  cases,  merely  joined  the  majority.  The  Whig  Sen- 
ate leaders  were  Polk,  Morehead  (J.  T.),  Dockery,  Bryan  of 
Beaufort  city  and  a  few  others,  while  the  House  Demo- 
cratic leaders  were  equally  new  men.  The  result  was  that, 
on  joint  ballot  the  parties  were  so  equally  balanced  that 
anything  might  happen — with  a  Whig  majority  of  two  in  the 
Senate,  as  there  finally  came  to  be,  and  a  Democratic  ma- 
jority of  two  in  the  House.  And  yet,  while  such  a  con- 
dition favored  the  east,  it  was  a  tremendous  party  revolution 
for  North  Carolina  that  promised  much  for  the  future; 
and  was  an  equally  wonderful  eastern  victory  in  the  midst 
of  a  sectional  state  revolution  in  which  the  east  was  prop- 
erly a  loser!  The  activities  of  the  old  legislative  election 
of  Governor  were  now  transferred  to  the  election  of 
United  States  Senators ;  and  the  small  margin  let  loose 
an  amount  of  contest  of  seats  on  various  grounds  and  resig- 
nations and  apparently  even  death,  that  characterized  this 
Assembly  above  probably  all  its  predecessors.  The  result 
was  that  a  Democratic  United  States  Senator,  Judge  Strange, 
was  chosen,  by  a  majority  of  four  votes ;  and  the  new  Sena- 
tor would  be  asked  to  act  on  the  proposition  of  the  Minister 
from  the  Republic  of  Texas,  just  arrived  in  Washington, 
that  that  republic  become  a  state  in  the  American  union,  to 
become  the  only  state  that  ever  exercised  national  sover- 
eignty as  a  commonwealth.  And,  as  Mexico  proposed 
forcibly  to  resist  this  course,  the  new  Senator  was  destined 
to  help  sow  the  seeds  of  a  foreign  war. 

The  cap-stone  of  Whig,  though  not  unmixed  Western 
victory,  was  the  inauguration  of  Governor  Dudley  at  Gov- 
ernment House,  foot  of  Fayetteville  street,  on  January  1, 
1837,  at  noon,  in  the  House  of  Commons  Hall.  The  noble 
new  capitol  at  the  other  end  of  the  thoroughfare  was  in 
course  of  construction,  but  it  was  not  destined  to  be  ready 
for  the  first  Whig  executive ;  and  in  this  hall  which  was 
properly  the  Executive  Mansion,  he  outlined  his  policies. 
They  noted  that  the  state,  fifth  in  population  among  the 
twenty-six,  needed  all  manner  of  internal  improvement, 
from  education  to  transportation.  With  only  a  third  of  the 
banking  capital  of  neighboring  states   to  the   south,   they 


176  JOHN  MOTLEY  :\IOREHEAD 

need  more,  as  the  root  of  progress.  The  new  distribu- 
tion of  federal  surplus  promised  nearly  two  millions  and 
would  be  an  aid,  but  his  main  idea  was  increase  in  capital 
of  the  present  banks ;  for  he  was  not  in  favor  of  State  aid 
in  transportation ;  in  which  respect  he  was  thoroughly  east- 
ern, and  thereby  laid  foundations  for  a  new  determination 
in  the  west.  Governor  Dudley  was  a  very  high  type  of 
man — a  moderate  and  a  harmonizer,  but  he  was  by  no 
means  designed  to  carry  out  the  purposes  of  the  west. 
Under  his  influence,  the  Assembly  was  almost  wholly 
occupied  with  financial  measures,  reorganization  of  State 
finances,  in  which  Representative  Wm.  A.  Graham  led. 
The  session  was  64  days  long — one  of  the  longest  and  most 
important  in  results,  for  it  adopted  the  two-fifths  state-aid 
plan  for  the  following  railroad  projects:  Cape  Fear  and 
Western  ( Fay etteville- Yadkin),  the  Wilmington  and  Wel- 
don,  the  North  Carolina  Central  (Beaufort  harbor,  to  go  to 
Fayetteville)  ;  and  adopted  reorganization  of  the  education 
board  on  the  basis  of  reclaiming  swamp  lands  and  bank 
stock;  redemption  of  State  paper  money  of  1835,  revision 
and  publication  of  code  modified,  new  assessment  law, 
militia  self-election,  abolition  of  imprisonment  of  honest 
debtors,  and  some  others.  The  favor  to  the  Louisville- 
Charleston  Railroad  project  was  marked  and  banking 
facilities  were  granted  to  it.  Meanwhile,  the  legislature 
had  also  incorporated  a  Raleigh  southwestern  road  as  ex- 
tension of  the  Gaston  road,  which  latter  line  was  making 
great  progress  in  construction,  50  miles  having  been  located 
and  nearly  all  under  contract,  with  a  force  of  seven  hun- 
dred laborers.  With  its  new  extension  it  desired  to  tap 
a  region  midway  between  Charlotte  and  Fayetteville, 
going  through  Anson  county,  its  name  being  the  Raleigh 
and  Columbia  Railroad.  These  things  put  vigor  into  Wil- 
mington, and  by  March,  she  had  won  the  two-fifths  state 
aid ;  had  one  locomotive  and  another  on  the  way  from 
England,  expecting  to  have  30  miles  completed  at  the  south 
end  before  the  end  of  the  year,  85  miles  to  Waynesboro 
(Goldsboro)  graded,  and  20  miles  completed  at  the  Weldon 
end.     By  April  trains  on  the  Virginia  line  to  Gaston  were 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  177 

running — and  bridges  were  building  over  the  Roanoke  both 
at  Gaston  and  Weldon.  By  July  (1837)  the  Gaston  road 
had  70  miles  surveyed  to  within  15  miles  of  Raleigh,  60 
miles  under  contract,  50  miles  to  be  ready  for  rails  in  No- 
vember, and  the  first  10  miles  out  of  Gaston  to  be  laid  at 
once,  while  the  laborers  had  increased  to  about  1200.  The 
Portsmouth  road  was  ready  to  send  its  cars  over  the  Wel- 
don bridge  as  soon  as  it  was  completed  and  the  same  road 
was  able  to  announce  an  accident  in  which  two  were  killed, 
while  Supreme  Courts  were  locating  responsibility  and 
damages.  In  the  midst  of  all  this  the  Newbern  Spectator, 
in  Judge  Gaston's  town,  was  calling  vigorously  for  the  state 
to  note  great  improvement  in  Beaufort  harbor  and  to 
undertake  a  sea  to  Tennessee  railroad.  The  quarry  road  at 
Raleigh  and  the  Petersburg  road  had  served  a  good  pur- 
pose ;  the  railroad  in  North  Carolina  was  an  accomplished 
fact,  and  the  gold  at  the  end  of  the  rainbow  was  the  riches 
of  the  Roanoke  valley;  but  it  will  be  observed  all  of  this  rail 
activity,  except  that  proposed  by  South  Carolina  was  almost 
wholly  eastern  and  southern ;  not  in  the  great  central  west 
that  had  brought  about  this  revolution,  at  all.  Indeed  it 
seemed  to  cover  almost  every  part  of  the  state  but  their 
own,  and  to  deliberately  share  their  trade  with  other  states, 
when  it  was  not  a  desperate  effort  merely  to  save  a  share 
for  themselves.  This  was  because  the  time  was  not  ripe 
for  leadership  of  that  great  central  west  to  lay  down  its 
program. 

The  coming  leader  was  himself  growing  in  power  and 
wealth.  John  Motley  Morehead  was  forty-one  years  old, 
and  about  him  at  "Blandwood,"  in  Greensboro,  was  growing 
up  a  numerous  farmily :  his  eldest  child,  Letitia,  was  a  girl  of 
fourteen,  and,  like  his  father,  he  desired  for  his  family  a 
higher  education,  and  it  was  time  his  eldest  child  was 
entering  upon  it.  His  next  child,  however,  was  also  a 
daughter,  Mary  Corrina,  a  girl  of  twelve  years,  likewise 
almost  ready ;  while  Ann  Eliza  II,  his  third  child,  named  for 
her  mother,  and  but  a  couple  of  years  behind  at  the  age 
of  ten  years,  Mary  Louise,  seven  years  of  age,  and  Emma 
Victoria,  a  babe  about  one  year  old,  convinced  him  that 


178  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

whatever  his  plans  for  higher  education  of  his  girls  might  be, 
they  must  necessarily  be  large  plans,  and  plans  for  female 
education,  rather  than  male,  since  he  had  but  one  son,  a 
child  of  four  years,  John  Lindsay/  For  the  son,  Caldwell 
Institute,  established  by  Presbyterians,  of  whom  President 
Caldwell  of  the  University  was  a  leader  and  named  for  him, 
had  been  opened  in  January,  the  previous  year,  and  had 
just  been  chartered  by  the  Assembly  and  was  already  most 
successful.  There  had  been  a  small  private  girls'  school  in 
Greensboro  for  a  number  of  years,  and,  during  the  previous 
year,  a  talented  lady.  Miss  Mary  Ann  Hoye,  had  had 
charge,  and  he  had  placed  four  of  his  daughters  under  her 
guidance.  But  this  was  not  the  advanced  education  he  had 
in  mind. 

There  were  large  ideas  abroad  in  Greensboro  at  this  time : 
The  editor  of  the  Patriot  was  working  out  plans  for  a 
southern  periodical  as  ambitious  as  Morris'  and  Willis' 
New  York  Mirror.  The  Moravians  had  a  girls'  school  of 
higher  education  at  Salem,  a  few  miles  westward,  and  the 
Friends  had  a  Boarding  School  at  New  Garden  to  the 
eastward ;  while  the  Methodists,  with  a  little  school  for  chil- 
dren at  Greensboro,  had,  during  the  previous  January,  ap- 
plied, with  others,  not  only  for  a  new  North  Carolina  Con- 
ference, but  for  a  female  school  of  higher  education  for  it 
at  Greensboro  as  a  Female  College.  Mr.  Morehead  decided 
he  himself  would  take  Miss  Hoye  as  a  nucleus  and  create 
a  school  of  higher  education,  not  only  for  his  own  daugh- 
ters, but  for  the  girls  of  the  South  as  well.^  He  had 
become  interested  in  the  fact  that  the  novelist,  Maria  Edge- 
worth,  had  done  so  much  for  Ireland  that  she  had  become 
the  inspiration  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  doing  the  same  for 
Scotland  in  his  Waverley  novels,  the  books  of  both  authors 
being  great  favorites  in  his  home  and  town ;  and  he  chose 
as  a  name  for  the  proposed  institution,  Edgeworth  Female 
Seminary.^     As  his  plans  were  on  a  large  scale  it  required 

^  The  daughter  named  for  his  wife  was  born  February  8,  1827,  and  died 
Oct.  7,  1876. 

^  The  girls'  school  in  which  Miss  Hoye  taught,  however,  continued  for  some 
time  after  she  left  it 

^  Miss  Edgeworth  was  still  living,  although  Scott  had  been  dead  for  five 
years,  and  the  novels  of  both  were  'best  sellers"  of  the  day. 


■V^;-,      '^    '-' 


^ 


E^«Kil€«K.4:  -S' 


1 


tit 

Hi 


'?Mm^^ 


Edgewortii   Female  Seminary 

Greensboro,  North  Carolina 

From  an  old  woodcut 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  179 

the  next  three  years  to  get  ready  for  the  opening.  He  pur- 
chased a  large  tract  of  land  from  his  home,  "Blandwood," 
north  to  West  Market  Street,  to  what  became  the  site  of 
the  Methodist  Female  College.  At  his  own  expense  also 
he  erected  the  seminary  itself,  a  large  four-story  brick 
structure,  and  laid  out  the  grounds  in  picturesque  design. 
It  might  well  look  as  though  the  spirit  of  an  Edgeworth,  that 
inspired  a  Scott,  might  be  preparing  decades  later  to  in- 
spire an  "O.  Henry,"  who  was  also  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  a 
woman  teacher  of  Greensboro  who  was  herself  an  Edge- 
worth  graduate.  This  will  indicate  the  kind  of  vision, 
ability  and  wealth  that  John  Motley  Morehead  was  to 
bring  to  public  affairs  when  the  time  was  ripe. 

One  reason  for  this  delay  was  the  sudden  announcement 
in  Washington  on  May  12th,  that  the  banks  of  New  York, 
Philadelphia  and  Baltimore  had  suspended  specie  pay- 
ments, and  the  panic  was  so  great  in  New  York,  that  two 
regiments  of  soldiers  were  called  out  to  preserve  order. 
Said  one  witness  of  it  in  New  York:  "I  have  witnessed  ex- 
citement and  distress  produced  by  Yellow  Fever,  Cholera, 
and  the  great  Fire,  and  I  assure  you,  if  they  were  all  con- 
centrated and  caused  to  take  place  in  one  day,  the  excite- 
ment and  distress  would  not  equal  that  now  felt  in  New 
York  every  day!"^  There  was  no  doubt  in  the  minds  of 
men  like  Mr.  Morehead  and  other  Whigs,  that  this  was  the 
natural  result  of  the  Jackson  destruction  of  the  regulatory 
financial  system  of  which  the  United  States  Bank  was  the 
head  and  had  been,  with  its  predecessors,  the  first  Bank  of 
the  United  States  and  its  predecessor  (the  present  oldest 
institution  of  the  kind  in  the  nation.  The  Bank  of  North 
America,  both  of  Philadelphia)  for  over  a  half-century; 
nearly  ever  since  the  Yorktown  surrender,  except  for  an 
interregnum  of  four  years,  1811-16,  the  President  of  the 
first  two  banks,  Thomas  Willing,  being  known,  for  this 
period  of  about  thirty  years,  as  "The  Old  Regulator"  of 
American  finance.  This  system,  designed  by  James  Wilson, 
and  adopted  by  both  treasury  heads,  Robert  Morris  and 

1  Raleigh  Register,  May  16,   1837. 


180  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Alexander  Hamilton,  was  built  up  by  that  remarkable  man, 
Thomas  Willing,  the  only  man  ever  compared  to  Wash- 
ington, and  that,  too,  by  no  less  a  man  than  the  great 
lawyer,  Horace  Binney.  The  destruction  of  that  system, 
without  offering  any  regulatory  system  in  its  place,  may  be 
compared  to  what  would  happen  at  the  present  day  if  Presi- 
dent Harding  were  to  destroy  the  Federal  Reserve  system. 
The  State  banks  tried  to  bear  the  burden,  but  were  unable 
to  do  so,  and  legislatures  everywhere  were  hastily  sum- 
moned. The  Bank  of  North  Carolina,  which  had  super- 
seded the  old  State  Bank,  held  out  until  May  19th,  when  it, 
too,  suspended  specie  payments.  Currency  and  even  gov- 
ernment drafts  had  no  value.  "So  much,"  said  the  Raleigh 
Register  of  May  23rd,  "for  this  grand  'Experiment'  with 
the  curency,  which,  it  was  ever  and  often  promised,  should 
fill  the  purse  of  the  poor  man  with  Benton  yellow  boys,  and 
supersede  altogether  those  dirty  rags,  called  paper  money." 
The  Whigs  held  that  it  all  came  about  from  President  Jack- 
son's demand  that  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  remove 
a  man  from  one  of  its  branches  who  was  opposed  to  his 
election  and  the  Bank  refused ;  whereupon  in  1834  he  began 
his  attacks  upon  it,  which,  in  three  years,  had  destroyed 
it  and  the  financial  system,  with  these  lamentable  results. 
The  Democratic  leaders  held  otherwise  and  spoke  of  the 
"money  power,"  as  later  generations  speak  of  "the  inter- 
ests" or  "corporations."  And  yet  the  American  system 
was  like  that  of  every  other  great  country  in  the  world  and 
had  made  American  money  respected  everywhere,  as  it  is 
under  the  Federal  Reserve  system  today ;  but  the  difficulty 
was  that  "The  Old  Regulator"  was  not  replaced  by  a  new 
regulator  of  some  kind. 

Nothing  could  have  happened  more  fortunate  for  the 
immediate  future  of  the  Whigs,  either  locally  or  nationally. 
On  July  4,  1837,  the  W^higs  of  Ohio  called  for  a  national 
convention  in  June,  1838,  at  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania,  and 
the  Whigs  of  North  Carolina  put  up  William  A.  Graham 
for  Congress,  for  election  on  August  10th,  while  other  dis- 
tricts put  up  Whigs  also  and  Stanly  of  the  Third  was 
elected  on  July  27th.     Whigs  everywhere  made  great  gains 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  181 

upon  the  administration  members,  which,  among  them- 
selves, were  divided  into  conservative  and  what  was  called 
"Loco  Foco"  wings.  It  was  September  before  a  Bank  Con- 
vention was  proposed  to  consider  resumption  of  specie 
payments ;  and  President  Van  Buren  ready  to  propose  a 
Sub-Treasury  system,  while  postage  and  duties  were  de- 
manded in  gold  by  the  national  government,  which  enabled 
them  to  pay  members  of  the  national  government  in  specie. 
Upon  which  the  Whigs  exclaimed :  "Gold  for  the  Govern- 
ment! Rags  for  the  People!"  Thereupon  the  President's 
state.  New  York,  went  bodily  for  the  Whigs ;  and  on  the  8th 
of  November,  at  Alton,  Illinois,  occurred  the  first  bloodshed 
of  the  Abolition  movement,  in  the  death  of  Rev.  Owen  P. 
Love  joy  in  a  riot.  The  bankers'  convention  in  mid-winter 
did  not  think  it  advisable  to  set  a  date  for  resumption, 
which  set  it  forward  at  least  until  their  next  meeting-  in 
April,  1838.  The  administration  charged  this  action  to 
another  Philadelphia  state  bank,  the  Bank  of  Pennsylvania, 
which  had  become  the  leading  one — said  to  have  more 
specie  in  its  vaults  than  all  the  New  York  banks  put  to- 
gether; but  the  real  reason  seems  to  have  been  an  inability 
to  support  such  a  movement,  in  parts  of  New  England.^ 
At  any  rate  the  critical  situation  remained  and  contributed 
to  the  Whig  cause,  while  the  growing  acuteness  of  the 
Abolition  movement  in  both  Whig  and  Democratic  ranks  in 
the  north,  involved  the  situation  still  more.  The  aggressive- 
ness of  the  latter  movement  made  a  new  self-consciousness 
in  both  North  and  South,  so  that  hereafter  they  should  be 
spelled  with  capital  letters ;  and  a  like  aggressiveness  was 
in  the  slave-holding  states,  determined  to  hold  their  present 
standing  by  securing  a  new  Southern  State  in  the  South  for 
every  new  one  in  the  North. 

And  these  midwinter  national  phenomena  of  1837-8  were 
accompanied  by  significant  local  ones  in  North  Carolina. 
On    December    5th,    the    Wilmington    &    Raleigh    (as    its 

^  New  York  quotations  on  bank  notes  of  exchange  on  other  cities,  in  Jan- 
aary,  1838,  are  interesting:  The  lowest  rate  was  that  for  Philadelphia  and 
Charleston,  lA  to  2.  The  next  closest  to  these  was  Boston,  IJ  to  2i.  Balti- 
more followed  with  2  to  2^.  Richmond  and  New  Orleans  had  next  place  with 
2i  to  3.  Augusta  and  Savanna  had  3  to  3i;  Cincinnati  had  5  to  6,  and  Mobile, 
5i  to  6.     It  is  difficult  to  realize  these  relations  today. 


18^  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

corporate  title  still  stood)  or  Wilmington  &  Weldon  Rail- 
road, which  had  taken  over  the  Halifax  &  Weldon  line, 
announced  that  "The  Engine  with  Train  of  Coaches  and 
Cars"  was  now  leaving  Halifax  every  morning,  going  by 
way  of  Weldon  to  Portsmouth  to  meet  the  boat  for  the 
national  capital.  This  was  the  first  regular  train  to  run  any 
material  distance  in  North  Carolina.  The  Wilmington  road 
had  advertised  her  port  business  in  May,  previously,  show- 
ing that  152  vessels  to  foreign  ports  and  150  coastwise  ports 
had  taken  out  nearly  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  exports 
in  the  previous  six  months — $999,937.16,  to  be  exact.  To 
see  such  progress  in  transportation  as  this  from  Wil- 
mington, Weldon,  Raleigh  and  Gaston,  and  prospects  at 
Fayetteville,  Yadkin  and  the  Louisville,  Cincinnati  & 
Charleston,  affecting  nearly  every  part  of  the  state  but  her 
own,  it  was  not  strange  that,  in  January,  1838,  the  Patriot 
of  Greensboro,  should  be  the  first  Whig  organ  to  announce 
that  Governor  Dudley  would  decline  re-election,  and  to 
issue  a  call  for  Guilford  county  Whigs  to  hold  a  conven- 
tion to  nominate  a  Whig  successor,  whose  plans  of  progress 
covered  the  great  central  west.  The  call  alarmed  the  Whig 
Register  of  Raleigh,  which  could  not  believe  that  Governor 
Dudley  would  decline:  "We  would  therefore  say,"  wrote 
Editor  Gales,  "to  the  Guilford  Whigs  (whose  name  is 
legion)  bide  a  hit!"''  And  by  February  19th,  the  Whig  edi- 
tor at  the  capital  was  able  to  announce  that  Governor  Dud- 
ley would  run  again.  On  January  30th,  Governor  Dudley 
had  written  Ex-Governor  Swain,  then  President  Swain  of 
the  University,  asking  his  advice  on  standing  for  a  second 
term,  saying  he  did  not  want  it,  but  "had  never  given 
authority  for  any  such  announcement."  Some  of  his  friends 
thought  he  could  not  retire  "with  safety  to  the  party," 
although  he  himself  believed  "any  other  Whig  candidate 
would  unite  the  same  vote."-  On  his  announcement  through 
the  Raleigh  Register  that  he  would  stand  again,  the  Stand- 
ard of  the  same  city,  the  Democratic  organ,  plainly  said  they 
would  hesitate  to  put  anyone  up  against  him.     The  reason 


^  Raleigh  Register,  January  22,  1838. 
^  Swain  Papers,  Hist.   Comm.   of  N.  C. 


It-    ■2i.iTU-'.-j:ir««fri-_"'- 


Siit!5:"i»  .Sj^  >-" 


First   Picture   of  a  Raleigh   &  Gaston   Railroad  Coa^i 
May   30,    1838 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  183 

for  this,  though  not  stated,  was  plainly  that  the  lower 
Roanoke  and  Cape  Fear  valleys  were  holding  together  in  an 
eastern  combination  against  the  west ;  and  Governor  Dud- 
ley's letters  to  President  Swain  soon  after,  trying  his  best  to 
get  the  latter  to  become  President  of  the  Fayetteville  and 
Western  Railroad  project,  shows  the  strong  hand  that  Wil- 
mington is  playing,  with  Fayetteville  as  her  partner  and 
sub-port  feeder  from  the  west.  In  keeping  with  this 
purpose,  was  the  effort  to  swing  the  Beaufort-Newbern- 
Waynesville  "North  Carolina  Central"  south  to  Fayetteville, 
instead  of  to  Raleigh  and  the  west.  In  short,  Wilmington 
was  striving  to  unite  the  conservative  east  with  railroads, 
and  the  lower  Roanoke  was  willing  that  she  should.  When 
Governor  Dudley  consented  to  stand  for  a  second  term, 
it  was  a  matter  of  course  that  he  would  be  elected :  in  the 
west,  because  he  was  a  Whig,  and  in  the  east,  because  he 
was  an  eastern  conservative  in  state  matters,  or  sufficiently 
so  to  develop  the  east  through  railroads,  as  he  was  President 
of  the  largest  road  designed  to  bind  the  east  together.  It  is 
well  to  take  careful  note  of  these  circumstances,  for  they 
not  only  present  the  occasion  for  Guilford  county's  haste 
to  get  rid  of  their  present  Whig  executive,  but  also  the  large 
size  of  the  contract  before  them  when  they  should  suc- 
ceed." 

This  haste  in  Guilford  was  not  looked  upon  indiffer- 
ently by  the  east.  Contemporary  with  it  was  a  plea  in  the 
Newhern  Spectator  that  a  British  vessel  had  passed  out  of 
Beaufort  harbor  in  thirty-five  minutes  in  "twenty-three  feet 
of  water  on  the  bar!"  The  writer  deplored  the  neglect  of  a 
great  railway  effort  to  utilize  this  great  port.  On  May 
12th,  the  Raleigh  and  Gaston  road  made  an  announcement 
more  notable  than  that  of  a  train  to  Portsmouth,  namely, 
that  trains  were  now  running  from  Littleton  in  Warren 
County,  over  the  Gaston  bridge  and  to  Petersburg,  connect- 
ing with  trains  by  way  of  Richmond  and  Washington  for 
New  York,  the  "Great  Mail  Route,"  in  39  hours— or  48  in- 

^  The  Raleigh  Standard,  Democrat,  says  on  December  4,  1839,  that  a 
Whig  caucus,  during  this  Assembly  of  '38— '39,  agreed  on  Mr.  Morehead  as  the 
next  candidate  for  Governor,  and  that  "everybody  knows  it."  No  public  ex- 
pression of  it  occurred,  however,  until  the  following  August  at  Greensboro. 


184  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

eluding  all  stops.  Travellers  from  Greensboro  and  the 
west  are  assured  that  this  line  lands  them  in  Washington 
24  hours  ahead  of  any  other  line.  Then  about  June  1st,  a 
writer  in  the  Fayetteville  Observer,  who  avows  his  belief 
that  Wilmington  should  be  made  the  importing  center  of  the 
State  and  that  a  railroad  should  be  built  from  Fayetteville 
to  the  west,  calls  for  a  "commercial  and  agricultural"  con- 
vention at  Greensboro  on  July  4th  next.  Thereupon,  on 
June  12th,  the  Raleigh  Register  notes  that  The  Carolina 
Watchman  describes  a  considerable  public  sentiment  in  the 
west  in  favor  of  extending  the  Raleigh  and  Gaston  from 
Raleigh  westward.  By  June  18th,  Wilmington  had  had  a 
meeting  to  promote  it  and  called  upon  Raleigh,  Newbern, 
Halifax,  Fayetteville,  Salisbury  and  all  the  other  leading 
towns  to  cooperate.  The  Wilmington  Advertiser  taunts  the 
Raleigh  Register  with  hesitation  which  Editor  Gales  is  com- 
pelled to  deny,  but  qualify,  in  favor  of  certain  "local"  predi- 
lections, well  understood ;  but,  on  June  25th,  he  calls  a 
meeting  to  forward  it.  Then  The  Western  Carolinian 
presents  some  inviting  manufacturing  statistics  of  great 
moment  to  railroads  to  the  west :  Cotton  factories  now 
actually  in  operation  number  practically  a  dozen,  nearly  all 
in  the  west,  namely  (passing  by  the  oldest  one  at  Tar  River 
falls  in  Edgecombe  county),  one  near  Lincolnton  owned  by 
John  Hoke ;  one  at  Fayetteville  owned  by  Mr.  Mallet ;  and 
another  there  owned  by  Benbow  &  Company ;  one  in 
Greensboro,  steam  power,  owned  by  Mr.  Humphreys ;  one 
at  Milton  owned  by  a  company ;  one  at  Mocksville  owned 
by  Thomas  McNeely ;  one  or  more  in  Orange  county  owned 
by  companies ;  one  at  Salem,  steam-power,  owned  by  a 
company ;  one  in  Randolph  owned  by  a  company,  and  one  at 
Lexington,  Davidson  county,  owned  by  a  company.  Be- 
sides there  are  over  a  half-dozen  more  now  building — all  in 
the  west;  one  at  Rockfish,  near  Fayetteville,  owned  by  a 
company ;  one  in  Richmond  county  owned  by  a  company ; 
one  near  Leaksville,  on  Dan  river,  a  stone  building,  owned  by 
-John  M.  Morehead,  Esq. ;  one  in  Surry  county,  on  Hunting 
Creek,  owned  by  Mr.  Douthet;  one  in  Montgomery  county 
owned  by  a  company;   and   one,   ten   miles   northeast   of 


A   Georgia   Train    of   1838 
From  a  live-dollar  State  bank  bil 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  185 

Salisbury,  owned  by  Fisher  and  Lemly.  There  were  rumors 
of  three  or  four  others  projected.  Three  years  before  great 
quantities  of  cotton  yarn  came  from  the  north ;  now,  not 
only  did  "not  a  hank"  come  in,  but  North  Carolina  was 
already  beginning  to  ship  out,  even  to  New  York;  and  un- 
doubtedly coarse  cotton  fabrics  would  soon  rival  the  north. 

And  then  came  the  Greensboro  Convention  on  July  4th, 
with  Governor  Dudley  presiding.  Again  they  covered  up 
the  word  "transportation"  with  "Internal  Improvement." 
Wilmington,  Fayctteville,  Guilford,  Chatham,  Randolph, 
Davie,  Salisbury,  Lexington,  Hillsboro,  and  Rockingham — 
those  in  '  cs  being  towns — were  represented,  Mr.  More- 
head  be.  one  of  the  Guilford  delegation,  the  strongest 
present.  It  is  notable  that  Governor  Dudley  did  not  put 
Mr.  Morehead  on  one  committee,  and  that  he  advocated 
the  Fayetteville  terminus.  It  is  notable  that  to  the  Gover- 
nor's general  committee  was  assigned  the  canvassing  of  the 
best  route  for  the  "Central  Railroad."  The  only  specific 
thing  decided  upon,  however,  was  a  Raleigh  Convention 
for  the  second  Monday  in  December  next. 

Contemporary  with  this  event  was  the  announcement 
that  Philadelphia  banks  v.'ould  resume  specie  payment  on 
August  1st;  and  that  the  Democrats  finally  decided  to  put 
up  a  candidate  for  Governor,  Ex-Governor  John  Branch ; 
but  it  was  done  with  so  little  enthusiasm  that  the  result  was 
a  foregone  conclusion.  Governor  Dudley  was  good  enough 
for  the  east,  even  if  he  was  a  Whig.  For,  under  his  in- 
spiration, Wilmington  was  making  tremendous  efforts  to 
make  herself  the  acknowledged  commercial  center  of  the 
state.  They  showed  that  Wilmington's  total  outgoing  ton- 
nage surpassed  even  Norfolk  by  about  5000  tons ;  that 
North  Carolina's  entered  tonnage  was  nearly  5000  above 
Virginia ;  and  that  Wilmington  owned  more  tonnage  than 
Richmond,  Petersburg  or  Edenton  by  about  2000  above  the 
highest,  Richmond.  And  in  August,  the  Railroad  Presi- 
dent Governor  of  \\'ilmington  was  re-elected  by  the  tre- 
mendous majority  of  17,041  votes !  Wilmington  stock 
was  rising  and  her  two  wings  were  W'higs  and  Railroads, 
with  a  powerful  rudder  named  East ;  but  there  was  a  very 


186  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

evident  apprehension  that  Guilford  county  was  Hable  to 
puncture  the  aeroplane's  gas  tank — to  use  a  figure  not,  of 
course,  current  then ;  and  that  one  never  could  tell  what 
Raleigh  might  do.  In  October  the  Raleigh  and  Gaston 
people  were  trying  to  borrow  money  in  New  York  to  com- 
plete their  road ;  and  they  also  announced  that  their  Raleigh 
and  Columbia  road  had  enough  subscriptions  to  get  a  char- 
ter. The  Greensboro  Patriot  at  the  same  time  announced 
that  place's  purpose  to  establish  a  bank,  and  Fayetteville 
was  to  put  in  the  same  town  a  branch  bank.  In  November 
"Mento)-"  in  the  Raleigh  Standard,  Democrat,  fought  the 
Columbia  road  idea,  in  favor  of  Wilmington,  of  course, 
while  "Rip  Van  Winkle,"  in  the  Register,  fought  him,  and 
incidentally  dropped  these  illuminating  sentences :  "To  the 
West,"  said  "Van  Winkle,"  "this  matter  presents  itself  with 
peculiar  force,  and  if  they  do  not  arouse  themselves  at  this 
attempt,  by  a  sectional  interest  to  force  them  into  sectional 
measures,  it  may  be  too  late.  They  have  been  trifled  with 
long  enough,  and  it  is  time  their  hitherto  neglected  claims 
should  be  listened  to  and  complied  with ;  and  I  hope  every 
county  west  of  Raleigh  will  be  fully  represented  in  the  pro- 
posed Internal  Improvement  Convention,  about  to  be  holden 
in  this  place." 

As  that  meeting  was  to  occur  during  the  Assembly,  it 
was  a  comforting  fact  that  that  body  had  a  comfortable 
Whig  majority:  "We  hail  the  triumph  of  the  Whigs,"  wrote 
Editor  Gales  of  the  Register  on  December  3  [1838],  "as  the 
triumph  of  Republican  principles,  as  the  prostration  of  men 
who  have  made  themselves  odious  by  their  persecution, 
their  exclusiveness,  and  their  political  imbecility."  He  be- 
spoke Whig  generosity  to  the  foe,  however.  Seven  days 
later,  the  10th,  thirty-eight  counties'  delegates — some  coun- 
ties like  Cumberland,  Beaufort,  Guilford,  Randolph,  Wake 
and  Wayne  having  as  many  as  a  dozen  members — gathered 
at  the  Methodist  Church  in  Raleigh  as  successor  to  the 
Greensboro  Convention — but  Mr.  Morehead  was  not  one 
of  them.  It  was  an  able  convention,  compared  favorably 
with  that  of  1833,  and  Hon.  Romulus  M.  Saunders  was 
chosen  President.     Needless  to  say  every  section  asked  for 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  187 

its  favorite  water  or  land  transportation,  all  of  which  were 
referred  to  a  general  committee  of  thirteen,  which  reduced 
them  to  a  minimum  and  adopted  a  program  of  liberal  state 
aid  to  the  two  railroads  in  process  of  construction — the  Wil- 
mington road  and  the  Gaston — and  the  projected  enter- 
prises: the  Fayetteville-Western,  the  Nags  Head  Inlet, 
Beaufort  Harbor  to  somewhere  on  the  Wilmington-Weldon 
(incidentally  praising  the  harbor  as  unrivalled,  as  was 
shown  by  its  use  in  the  late  war  of  '12),  which  would  be 
called  major  projects,  and  such  minor  ones  as  a  Raleigh- 
Fayetteville,  and  a  Waynesboro  (Goldsboro) -Raleigh  rail- 
road and  a  Neuse  river  improvement  above  Newbern. 
Various  efforts  to  change  this  were  made,  among  them  to 
the  first  class,  a  State-built  turnpike  to  Greensboro,  but  this 
last  was  reduced  to  a  survey.  The  financial  side  was  taken 
up  and  a  loan  of  $3,000,000  was  recommended  to  carry  out 
the  plan,  and  a  committee  ordered  to  present  the  matter 
to  the  Whig  Assembly.  If  Mr.  Morehead  balanced  his 
national  Whig  principles  against  this  local  Eastern  pro- 
gram, as  he  of  course  did,  the  explanation  of  his  absence 
from  this  Convention  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  east  had 
actually  captured  the  Whig  organization  through  the  course 
of  Governor  Dudley's  Wilmington-Fayetteville  and  western 
program,  with  an  Albemarle-Nags  Head  Inlet  and  Beaufort 
Harbor-Raleigh  bait!  It  remained  to  see  what  the  Whig 
Assembly  would  do  with  it.  That  can  be  told  in  few  words  : 
Nothing ;  except  the  loan  to  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston  Railroad 
— a  loan,  because  its  state  stock-holders  were  made  liable. 
The  redeeming  feature  of  the  Whig  Assembly,  however, 
was  its  presentation  to  the  School  districts  of  a  constructive 
common  school  program  for  their  acceptance,  which  seems 
to  have  been  largely  the  work  of  President  Swain  of  the 
University. 

An  incident  occurred  before  the  Assembly  adjourned 
which  showed  the  Democratic,  or  Van  Buren  party,  antici- 
pating the  logical  next  step  by  Guilford  county,  began  the 
attack  on  Senator  James  T.  Morehead.  They  found  in  the 
Quaker  Memorial  against  slavery,  which  was  presented 
by  request  by  Senator  James  T.  Morehead  of  Greensboro, 


188  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

a  morsel  of  great  sweetness,  and  in  this  difficult  fight  against 
the  Senator's  brother's  undoubted  candidacy  for  Governor 
they  made  continual  use  of  it.     In  defending  both  More- 
heads   The  Grecnsborough  Patriot  of  February   18,    1839, 
described  the  authors  of  the  Memorial :  "in  much  the  larger 
portions  of  the  State  the  peculiarities  of  the  Society  of 
Friends  are  not  understood,  nor  even  know^n.     Their  princi- 
pal settlement  is  in  this  county,  and  we  are  well  acquainted 
with  their  manners,  habits  and  modes  of  thinking.'     They 
are  a  peculiarly  quiet,  unobtrusive,  orderly  and  intelligent 
people,  and  have  their  distinctive  traits,  which  they  have 
sustained  for  ages.     They  refuse  the  fashionable  modes  of 
speech  and  dress ;  support  their  own  poor ;  celebrate  their 
own  matrimonial  rites  according  to  the   simple   forms  of 
their  own  society  only;  pay  particular  regard  to  the  rights 
and  influence  of  women ;  are  forbidden  in  their  discipline 
to  hold  public  office ;  interfere  with  the  rights  of  no  person, 
and  refuse  to  wage  war,  even  in  self  defense.     They  own 
no  slaves.     They  are  opposed  to  slavery.     To  use  a  phrase 
of  their  own — they  bear  a  continual  testimony  against  it. 
Yet  they  are  not  Abolitionists,  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
term  is  taken  in  the  South.     They  would  be  as  far  from  en- 
couraging disobedience  or  rebellion  among  slaves,  or  from 
consenting  to  their  sudden  and  unprepared  liberation,  as 
the   most   devoted   advocates   of   'Southern   rights.'     They 
have  been  in  the  habit  of  petitioning  the  legislature  for  the 
'termination  of  slavery,'  for  a  series  of  years  past.     The 
representatives  of  the  people  of  Guilford  have  uniformly 
presented  their  memorials,  knowing  at  the  time  that  their 
prayer  would  be  utterly   fruitless — unheeded — forgotten — 
yet  they  discharged  their  'bounden  duty'  to  a  respectable 
part  of   the   constituency.     Judge   Dick    (who,   before   he 
accepted  the  judicial  bench,  was  the  champion  of  the  Van 
Buren  party  in  this  county),  when  a  representative,  pre- 
sented these  memorials — and  would,  we  doubt  not,  do  so 
again  under  the  same  circumstances."     This  indicated  the 


^  They  centered  about  "New  Garden,"  now  Guilford  College,  the  seat  of 
the  Quaker  institution  of  that  name  about  a  half  dozen  miles  west  of  Greens- 
boro, as  it  is  now  spelled. 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  189 

feeling  on  every  hand  that  Guilford  was  to  furnish  the 
next  gubernatorial  candidate;  for  with  all  the  Whig  Con- 
gressional conventions  during  the  spring,  no  candidate  for 
Governor  was  named. 

This  was  due  in  some  measure  to  the  Whig  fight  for 
Congressional  seats,  which  was  most  successful;  but  the 
first  to  enter  the  gubernatorial  field  was,  as  before,  old 
Guilford  county.  She  even  anticipated  the  call  for  a  state 
convention  for  that  purpose.  At  her  county  Whig  con- 
vention on  August  20,  1839,  it  was  "Resolved,  that  we 
esteem  our  fellow-citizen,  John  M.  Morehead,  Esq.,  as  a 
republican  in  manners,  in  conduct  and  principle;  a  gentle- 
man and  citizen  of  pure  and  elevated  character — a  states- 
man of  eminently  practical  mind,  and  of  enlarged  and  liberal 
views  of  public  policy — a  patriot  devoted  to  the  welfare  of 
the  State,  and  identified  in  all  his  interests  with  the  honor 
and  prosperity  of  North  Carolina ;  and  that  we  recommend 
him  to  that  convention  and  to  the  people  of  the  State  as  in 
every  way  worthy  to  be  her  Chief  Magistrate,"  while  they 
yielded  to  the  decision  of  the  convention.^ 

Orange  county  followed.  Moore  county,  on  the  31st, 
said :  "He  is  a  patriot  and  statesman  of  generous  and  en- 
larged views  of  public  policy,  and  closely  associated  in  all 
his  interests,  with  the  honor  and  prosperity  of  North 
Carolina,"  and  so  they  recommended  him  to  the  coming 
convention.  Cumberland  Whigs  joined  with  them.  Whigs 
of  Surry  followed.  The  Nezvbern  Spectator  said  the  East 
was  falling  in  line :  "Mr.  Morehead  has  a  large  stake  in  the 
welfare  and  prosperity  of  the  State.  Its  interests  are  his. 
He  owns  many  slaves,  is  deeply  embarked  in  manufacturing 
and  mining,  and  possesses  talents  and  acquirements  fully 
adequate  to  the  duties  of  the  high  station  to  which  the 
people  seem  inclined  to  call  him.  He  is  besides,  a  Western 
man,  and  justice  demands  that  we  support  a  gentleman  of 
that  section,  in  reciprocation  of  its  recent  aid  in  electing 
a  citizen  of  the  east."  Indeed  the  Spectator  went  so  far  as 
to  say  the  east  would  be  disappointed  if  Morehead  were 

1  The  Gresiisborough  Patriot,  27th  Aug.,  1839. 


190  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

not  nominated/  Stokes  County  Whigs  joined  them  on  Oc- 
tober 8th  and  Caswell  on  the  1st,  and  indeed  by  this  time 
forty  counties  had  acted.  Rockingham,  the  county  of  his 
boyhood,  on  the  29th  went  so  far  as  to  speak  of  him  as 
"a.  native  of  Rockingham,  whose  plain  republican  manners, 
superior  intellect,  political  honesty  and  practical  talent  as  a 
statesman,  eminently  qualify  him  for  chief  executive  of  our 
State."-  Then  came  the  State  Convention  of  November 
12th,  which,  "having  been  inspired  with  a  deep  and  lively 
sense  of  the  eminent  practical  vigor,  sound  Republican 
principles,  unblemished  public  and  private  virtues,  ardent 
patriotism  and  decided  abilities"  of  Mr.  Morehead  recom- 
mended him  to  the  people  of  the  State.  This  followed  the 
recommendation  of  the  committee  whose  "attention  has  been 
forciby  engaged  by  the  practical  energy,  the  sound  Republi- 
can principles,  the  distinguished  intellectual  vigor,  and 
fervid  patriotism  which  are  embraced  in  the  character  of 
our  cherished  fellow-citizen,  John  M.  Morehead  of  the 
county  of  Guilford.  Born,  reared  and  educated  among  the 
honest  yeomanry  of  North  Carolina,  all  his  heartfelt  sym- 
pathies are  with  the  people  of  this  State.  Severely  dis- 
ciplined by  a  constant  performance  of  the  practical  business 
of  life,  possessed  of  enlarged  and  liberal  views  of  the  policy 
of  the  State,  and  having  inflexibly  adhered  to  the  principles 
of  the  republican  creed  of  faith  in  every  political  emer- 
gency which  has  thus  far  passed  over  the  State,  we 
recognize  in  John  M.  Morehead  a  citizen  in  every  view  of 
his  character,  whom  we  deem  eminently  acceptable  to  the 
people  of  North  Carolina  as  a  candidate  for  the  office  of 
Governor  of  the  State."^ 


^  The  Greensborough  Patriot,  8th  Oct,  1839. 

^Ibid.,   12th  Nov.,  1839. 

^  Both  the  Rockingham  and  State  Whigs  of  course  made  the  natural  error 
of  not  knowing  that  he  was  two  years  old  when  he  came  to  that  countj',  and  was 
born  in  Pittsylvania  County,  Va.  Indeed  the  North  Carolina  "wish,  father  to 
the  thought,"  to  have  his  birthplace  in  the  Old  North  State  has  its  adherents 
even  to  this  day,  and  even  among  some  of  his  relatives!  Unfortunately,  unlike 
Homer,  the  facts  place  him   in  Virginia  by   birth. 

As  the  Raleigh  Standard,  Democrat,  of  December  9,  1835,  says,  no  other 
candidate  was  offered,  although  it  intimates  that  some  would  liked  to  have  been. 
It  is  in  form  of  innuendo,  however.  The  Star,  a  Raleigh  Whig  paper,  of  lith 
December,  '39,  says  Mr.  Morehead  was  spoken  of  as  far  back  as  the  Legisla- 
ture of  November,  1838,  because  of  universal  western  enthusiasm  for  him  and 
this  was  what  decided  the  Raleigh  convention — namely  that  no  one  else  would 
satisfy  the  west. 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  191 

Mr.  Morehead  was  notified  by  letter  dated  November 
13th,  and  on  the  25th  he  penned  his  letter  of  acceptance  as 
follows:  "Gentlemen:  Your  communication  of  the  13th 
instant  has  been  duly  received,  announcing  to  me,  that  the 
Convention  of  Delegates  of  the  Whig  party,  assembled  in 
the  City  of  Raleigh  on  the  12th  inst.,  has  unanimously  se- 
lected me  as  the  Candidate  of  the  Whig  party  for  Governor 
of  the  State,  at  the  ensuing  election. 

"This  flattering  testimonial  of  respect,  emanating  from 
so  respectable  a  source  as  that  Convention,  does  not  fail  to 
impress  me  with  a  lively  sense  of  the  honor  done  me  by  that 
body;  and,  if  there  were  no  other  reasons  to  influence  my 
course,  the  respect  I  have  for  the  wise  heads,  the  pure 
hearts,  and  the  well-established  Republican  principles  of 
those  who  composed  that  Convention,  would  make  me  hesi- 
tate long  before  I  would  gainsay  their  wishes. 

"But  I  know  I  shall  be  pardoned  by  that  Convention, 
when  I  say  that  considerations,  higher  than  those  already 
suggested,  combine  in  making  up  the  decision  to  which  I 
have  come. 

"I  view  the  Convention  as  emanating  directly  from  the 
people,  and  as  reflecting  their  wishes  and  their  will.  They 
have  found  themselves  grossly  deceived  by  those  in  whom 
they  heretofore  placed  confidence.  They  were  promised 
everything,  every  thing,  that  the  simplicity,  purity,  honesty 
and  economy  of  our  Republican  Institutions  could  require. 
Instead  of  finding  those  pledges  fairly  redeemed,  they  have 
witnessed  with  mortification  and  regret,  the  Federal  Ex- 
ecutive, repeatedly  endeavoring  to  fix  upon  them  the  compli- 
cated machinery  of  his  Sub-Treasury  and  that,  too,  after 
they  have  repudiated  his  notions  and  rejected  his  scheme. 
From  manifestations  in  the  late  Presidential  Tour,  we  may 
again  expect  the  wishes  of  the  people  to  be  set  at  defiance, 
and  another  attempt  made  to  force  this  scheme  upon  them. 

"If  this  attempt  is  again  made,  the  issue  will  be  fairly 
made  up  between  the  President  and  the  People — to  say 
whether  he  or  they  shall  govern. 

"On  the  one  hand  we  shall  behold  the  President  and  his 
ofificial  myrmidons,  greedy  for  the  onset,  with  their  banner 


192  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

unfurled,  bearing  the  insulting  inscription — 'To  the  Victors 
belong  the  Spoils' — on  the  other,  we  shall  see  the  People — 
Freemen — the  sons  of  the  Whigs  of  the  Revolution,  who 
knew  no  'Victors'  and  who  offered  no  'Spoils,'  but  the  havoc 
committed  upon  invading  legions. 

"If  the  same  spirit  now  burns  in  the  bosom  of  the  sons, 
that  animated  the  sires,  the  issue  cannot  be  doubtful.  The 
star-spangled  banner  will  be  thrown  to  the  breeze,  and  the 
glorious  motto — 'E  Pluribus  Unum' — shall  fioat  in  triumph  ; 
and  the  minions  of  power  and  of  corruption  will  vanish 
before  the  blazing  indignation  of  an  injured  people,  like  the 
morning  mists  before  a  glorious  sun. 

"The  People  were  promised  by  the  last  administration, 
in  the  footsteps  of  which  the  present  was  to  tread,  the 
cleansing  of  the  'Augean  stable,'  and  the  same  purity  that 
characterized  the  purer  days  of  the  Republic.  In  the  days 
of  Washington,  Jefferson  and  Madison  qualifications  for  of- 
fice were  honesty  and  capacity.  'Is  he  honest?'  'Is  he 
capable?' — and  office-holders  were  strictly  enjoined  from 
becoming  political  partisans,  and  from  interfering  in  elec- 
tions. In  the  present  day,  behold  the  melancholy  contrast! 
The  qualifications  now  are,  if  we  judge  by  the  result, 
unquestionable  dishonesty,  utter  incapacity  to  discharge  the 
duties  of  the  office,  but  extraordinary  capacity  to  serve  'the 
Party;'  entire  unwillingness  to  pay  the  people  their  money, 
but  great  readiness  to  pay  the  levies  made  upon  salaries  and 
embezzlements  for  the  support  of  'the  Party.' 

"Posterity  will  certainly  do  the  present  Administration 
the  justice  to  say,  that  no  prior  one  has  manifested  more 
signal  ability  in  the  selection  of  its  officers  for  the  purposes 
of  the  office,  than  the  present  has  manifested  in  the  selec- 
tion of  its  officers  for  the  purposes  of  the  party.  And  if 
there  be  any  doubt  upon  this  question,  reference  to  the  ex- 
traordinary abstractions  from  the  Treasury,  and  to  the 
nuisances  committed  in  most  civil  communities  by  official 
political  brawlers,  will  certainly  remove  that  doubt. 

"The  People  were  promised  honesty  and  strict  ac- 
countability from  the  Officers  of  Government;  and  by  way 
of  earnest  in  redemption  of  that  pledge,  one  Tobias  Wat- 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  193 

kins,  a  defaulter  of  some  $4000  under  the  Administration 
of  Mr.  Adams,  was  ferreted  out,  hunted  down  and  incar- 
cerated ;  and  the  people  well  hoped  that  all  other  public 
swindlers  would  be  dealt  with  in  like  manner. 

"They  have  been  told  again  and  again,  'by  Authority,' 
that  'all  was  well' — that  the  Government  was  greatly 
blessed  in  the  ability  and  faithfulness  of  its  Public  Officers ; 
but  recent  investigations  have  brought  to  light  corruption, 
dishonesty,  and  official  dereliction,  that  are  truly  startling 
and  alarming.  And  the  people,  to  their  sorrow,  have  learned 
that  a  falsehood  'by  Authority'  is  more  pernicious  to 
their  interests,  than  a  falsehood  'without  Authority.'  And 
they  verily  believe,  if  they  shall  ever  be  so  fortunate  as  to 
have  another  Administration,  that  will  bring  defaulters  to 
justice,  all  the  Penitentiaries  attached  to  the  Sub-Treasury 
Bill  will  not  hold  the  Tobiases  that  will  then  be  discovered. 

"Economy  is  a  word  that  seems  to  have  been  stricken 
from  the  nomenclature  of  the  present  Administration.  It 
has  become  a  bye-word  and  a  jest.  The  Expenditures  of 
the  Government,  increased  from  thirteen  to  thirty  odd 
millions,  show  what  the  party  in  power  mean  by  the  word. 
An  empty  Treasury  and  a  bankrupt  Government  tell  the 
people  how  grossly  they  have  been  deceived. 

"The  people  are  at  length  awakened  from  their  lethargy 
and  security,  and  aroused  to  their  danger.  They  no  longer 
regard  glossy  messages  and  partizan  demagogues.  They 
have  have  determined  to  think  and  act  for  themselves. 
They  are  moving  in  their  primary  Assemblies.  They 
are  determined,  by  united  action,  to  put  an  end  to 
that  misrule,  which  has  bankrupted  the  Government,  cor- 
rupted its  Officers  and  brought  universal  distress  upon 
every  class  of  the  community,  except  embezzling  Office- 
holders. 

"Your  Convention  was  the  offspring  of  that  determina- 
tion ;  and  no  person  can  unite  with  the  people  more 
heartily  than  I  do  'in  the  great  struggle'  for  correct  prin- 
ciples, which  the  Whigs  are  now  endeavoring  to  maintain. 

"At  no  period  of  my  life,  could  this  call  have  been  made 
with  more  inconvenience  to  myself,  than  the  present ;  but 


194  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

as  it  is  the  wish  of  the  people  that  I  shall  be  their  Candidate, 
I  'accept  the  nomination.'  And,  for  this  expression  of  their 
kind  consideration,  I  pledge  them  whatever  of  ability  and 
of  zeal  I  possess,  in  the  noble  cause  in  which  we  have  em- 
barked. 

"Before  closing  this  communication,  I  desire  to  sub- 
mit a  few  remarks  in  relation  to  two  subjects  in  which 
North  Carolina  has  much  at  stake.  I  allude  to  the  Public 
Lands,  and  to  the  subject  of  Abolition. 

"North  Carolina  ceded  to  the  United  States  a  large 
Territory.  She  is  equally  interested,  with  the  other  States, 
in  all  the  Public  Lands.  Her  interest  in  these  Lands  is 
worth  millions  upon  millions ;  and  if  she  could  receive  her 
share  of  the  proceeds  of  those  Lands,  every  poor  child  of 
the  State  could  be  educated,  and  every  work  of  Internal 
Improvement  successfully  prosecuted.  The  President  has 
left  us  nothing  to  hope  from  that  quarter,  and  it  remains 
for  the  people  to  say  whether  Jiis  zvill  shall  govern  them, 
or  their  will  shall  make  him  cease  to  govern — whether  he 
shall  be  sovereign,  or  they  shall  be  sovereign.  As  a  North 
Carolinian,  I  will  never  consent  to  surrender  this  ample 
patrimony  of  our  old  North  State. 

"On  this  subject  of  our  domestic  institution  of  Slavery, 
I  should  suppose  there  could  be  but  one  opinion  in  the  South, 
among  men  who  have  capacity  to  think. 

"The  emancipation  of  our  slaves  among  us  would  lead  to 
consequences  too  direful  for  contemplation.  And  no  man 
will  meet  with  more  uncompromising  hostility,  than  I  will, 
the  very  first  fanatical  or  unconstitutional  aggression  made 
upon  this  institution,  guaranteed  to  us  by  our  Federal 
Compact. 

"The  people's  attention  should  be  drawn  to  the  fact, 
that  some  rickety  understandings,  and  hypocritical  poli- 
ticians, are  continually  conjuring  up  the  awful  charge  of  a 
union  between  the  Abolitionists  and  the  Whigs — not  be- 
cause they  have  such  apprehension,  but  to  prevent  the  dis- 
covery of  an  actual  union  and  cooperation  of  the  Abolition- 
ists with  the  present  Administration,  ever  since  they  re- 
ceived that  withering  rebuke  at  the  hands  of  Mr.  Clay. 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  195 

"For  weal,  or  for  woe,  my  destiny  is  fixed  in  North 
Carolina — my  prospects  for  future  prosperity  are  attached 
to  her  soil — and  whatever  I  now  have,  or  ever  expect  to 
have,  will  be  protected  by  her  institutions. 

"For  your  kind  expressions  of  regard  towards  me,  ac- 
cept, gentlemen,  individually,  my  sincere  thanks,  and  for 
the  distinguished  honor  done  me  by  your  Convention, 
accept  collectively,  and  in  their  behalf,  the  profound  ac- 
knowledgment of  your  most  obt.  serv't 

"John  M.  Morehead." 

There  was  an  absolutely  clear  expression  on  every 
national  subject  for  which  the  Whigs  and  Mr.  Morehead 
stood.  His  attitude  on  slavery,  at  least  on  its  abolition,  could 
not  be  more  explicit.  His  record  as  to  free  negroes  voting 
had  been  unequivocally  and  vigorously  in  favor  of  it,  as  it 
had  been  for  the  education  of  the  negro.  He  had  slaves ; 
but  he  had,  like  his  brother,  and  Democratic  representatives 
like  Judge  John  M.  Dick  of  Greensboro,  presented  the  usual 
Quaker  memorials  against  slavery,  when  requested  by  that 
part  of  his  constituency.  Like  multitudes  of  Democrats,  as 
well  as  Whigs,  Mr.  Morehead  did  not  believe  in  slavery; 
but  it  was  a  system  entwined  in  our  institutions,  even  in  the 
national  constitution ;  therefore,  he  was  likewise  neither 
for  wholesale  abolition.  In  short,  he  was  for  the  con- 
stitutions of  state  and  nation  and  American  institutions  as 
they  were  and  had  been  from  the  beginning,  and  consider- 
ing slavery  a  curse  to  the  American  people,  but  an  existing 
fact.  Such  a  position  was  not  to  be  understood,  however, 
either  by  defenders  or  by  attackers  of  slavery;  the  pro- 
slavery  Southerner  or  the  Abolitionist  Northerner;  and  he 
was  not  the  only  leader  who  was  destined  to  be  misunder- 
stood ;  who  was  to  hold  to  the  constitution  until  it  should  be 
properly  amended.  Such  men,  however,  were  liable  to  be 
between  the  hammer  of  the  Abolitionist  and  the  anvil  of  the 
large  Slave-holders;  those  far  away  from  slaves,  but  mad 
for  their  freedom,  and  those  in  the  midst  of  a  slave  popu- 
lation, often  larger  than  their  own,  and  fearful  of  a  holo- 
caust— an  uncontrolled  Frankenstein.  Mr.  Morehead  held 
the  same  position  as  the  man  who,  as  President,  refused  to 


196  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

touch  slavery  so  long  as  the  constitution  was  preserved ; 
and  who,  as  all  students  of  history  now  know,  was  himself 
between  the  same  hammer  and  anvil:  between  those  who 
were  able  to  call  the  constitution  a  league  with  the  Devil  and 
a  covenant  with  Hell,  and  those  who  so  far  agreed  with  them 
as  to  be  ready  to  join  in  breaking  it.  On  these  points  his 
position  was  unmistakable.  That  he  was  for  a  national  regu- 
latory bank  was  no  less  certain ;  his  language  was  too  vivid 
on-  that  point  to  be  misunderstood,  as  it  was  on  the  personal 
government  of  Jacksons  and  Van  Burens. 

On  the  state  issues,  however,  there  was  a  possibility  of 
his  being  misunderstood.  He  was  a  western  man,  to  be 
sure ;  but  he  was  not  a  man  merely  for  the  west.  Localism, 
or  sectionalism,  had  prevailed  in  North  Carolina  since  the 
death  of  Murphy  and  President  Caldwell;  even  a  Gaston 
was  unable  wholly  to  cast  off  its  shackles,  and  a  Swain  stood 
helpless  against  it.  Mr.  Morehead's  first  entry  into  the 
arena  of  the  commonwealth  was  as  a  disciple  of  Murphy, 
and  his  second  as  an  advocate  of  the  measures  proposed  by 
"Carleton,"  the  pseudonym  of  President  Caldwell.  He 
carried  their  banners  boldly — so  boldly  indeed  that  he  had 
been  a  marked  man  ever  since.  Theirs  was  not  a  benumb- 
ing localism  or  sectionalism,  but  a  statemanship  for  the 
whole  commonwealth ;  and  not  merely  for  the  whole,  as 
superior  to  a  part ;  but  for  the  organic  nature  and  stature 
of  a  state  with  a  unifying  development.  The  vision  of  a 
Murphy  and  a  Caldwell  seemed  to  have  been  forgotten  in 
the  sectional  struggle  for  dominance,  or  the  desperate  ef- 
fort to  staunch  the  flow  of  Carolina's  commercial  blood  into 
the  arteries  of  neighboring  states.  There  was  an  instinct 
among  some  of  the  people  that  this  builder  of  factories, 
opener  of  mines,  developer  of  farms,  advocate  of  justice, 
friend  of  both  races,  and  creator  of  a  school  of  higher  edu- 
cation for  women  was  the  man  to  turn  to  at  this  juncture. 

Three  weeks  after  the  new  Whig  candidate  for  Gover- 
nor penned  his  letter  of  acceptance,  and  white  common 
schools  were  preparing  to  open  all  over  North  Carolina,  Mr. 
Morehead,  on  December  16th,  issued  an  announcement, 
which    appeared    first    in    the    Patriot,    that    "Edge worth 


RISE  OF  THE  WHIGS  197 

School,"  as  he  then  called  it,  would  open  for  the  first  time 
on  January  1,  1840,  with  Dr.  S.  P.  Weir  as  Principal  and 
Miss  M.  A.  Hoye,  late  of  Princeton,  vice-Principal,  former 
Principal  of  the  "Greensborough  Female  Academy."  It 
was  designed  to  be  a  school  of  higher  education  for  young 
women  throughout  the  South,  and  was  soon  destined  to 
have  pupils  from  West  Virginia  to  Texas.  In  an  announce- 
ment of  29th  October,  1839,  he  says  the  Edgeworth  grounds 
contain  about  twenty  acres  adjacent  to  his  own  residence, 
and  that  he  designs  it  to  be  "a  school  of  the  first  class — and 
it  shall  be  such — or  it  will  be  abandoned." 

When  "Edgeworth  School"  had  been  in  operation  about 
a  month,  the  editor  of  the  Patriot  had  the  following  to  say 
of  it — the  only  description  of  the  interior  known.  "The 
building  occupies  a  retired,  though  not  remote  situation, 
on  a  gentle  rise  of  ground,  at  the  western  part  of  the  vil- 
lage. It  is  of  brick,  fifty-six  feet  long  by  thirty-eight  in 
width ;  two  stories,  with  a  basement  and  attic ;  covered  with 
tin.  The  cornices,  doorways,  and  attic  windows  (which  lat- 
ter stand  out  to  the  view  with  good  efifect)  being  finished 
in  a  chaste  and  uniform  style  of  architecture — a  stately 
and  feminine  appearance  is  imparted,  which  strikes  the 
passer-by  as  peculiarly  appropriate.  The  interior  is  ar- 
ranged and  fitted  up  in  a  style  of  neatness  and  elegance, 
and  with  a  view  to  the  health,  convenience  and  comfort  of 
the  pupils.  Each  of  the  principal  stories  is  divided  by  a 
spacious  passage,  containing  a  flight  of  stairs.  On  the  left, 
as  one  enters  from  the  street,  are  the  recitation  rooms ;  and 
on  the  right,  rooms  of  the  same  size,  yet  having  large  folding 
doors  between  them,  which,  when  thrown  open,  give  to  both 
apartments  the  advantage  of  a  spacious  hall.  The  attic  story 
is  occupied  as  a  dormitory,  and  its  spacious  dimensions,  and 
airy  situation  adapt  it  well  to  its  purpose.  Connected  with 
the  main  building,  is  a  smaller  one,  containing  an  apartment 
for  the  sick,  a  dining  room,  and  other  apartments  necessary 
for  a  domestic  establishment.  When  the  extensive  grounds 
surrounding  the  School  shall  be  enclosed,  and  improved  as 
contemplated,  by  the  laying  out  of  walks,  and  pruning  the 
native  growth — it  will  make  a  temporary  home  for  the  pupil. 


198  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the  recollection  of  which  will  be  called  up  with  pleasure  in 
all  her  after  life."  He  then  adds:  "Success  to  it! — success 
to  the  Caldwell  Institute ! — Success  to  the  contemplated  Fe- 
male Collegiate  Institute!  and  last,  but  not  least,  success  to 
Common  Schools  in  our  County  and  our  State !"  This  might 
be  considered  an  omen  of  a  new  period  to  be  ushered  in  by 
the  new  State  leader,  candidate  for  its  highest  office,  a 
Whig — and  much  more. 


X 

A 

Whig  Leader  and  Governor 

AND 

The  First  Railways 
1840 

The  newly  nominated  Governor,  John  Motley  Morehead, 
the  candidate  of  the  Whig  west,  was  not  a  member  of  the 
Harrisburg  Convention,  or  more  serious  effort  would  have 
been  made  to  nominate  Senator  Henry  Clay  of  Kentucky 
instead  of  General  Harrison  and  John  Tyler  of  Virginia,  at 
the  December  meeting,  1839.  And  he  had  not  long  to  wait 
to  know  whom  the  Democrats  would  name  to  join  him  in 
the  first  state  canvass  in  the  history  of  the  commonwealth, 
like  had  already  been  begun  in  Tennessee ;  for  in  January 
his  rival  to  be,  Hon.  Romulus  Mitchell  Saunders  of  Caswell 
county,  also  accepted  a  nomination.  Judge  Saunders  should 
have  been  a  Whig,  as  he  studied  law  under  Judge  Hugh  L. 
Wliite  of  the  Tennessee  Supreme  Court.  He  was  five 
years  older  than  Mr.  Morehead  and  was  about  that  length 
of  time  ahead  of  him  in  public  life  in  both  houses  of  the 
Assembly  and  in  Congress.  He  was  Attorney  General  in 
1828,  but  on  his  appointment  in  1833  by  President  Jackson 
to  the  French  Claims  Commission,  resigned ;  while  on  his 
completion  of  that  service  in  1835  he  became  a  Judge  of  the 
Superior  Court.  He  therefore  came  into  the  campaign 
with  great  prestige,  and  the  forthcoming  canvass  was  bound 
to  be  a  most  remarkable  contest. 

While  preparations  were  making  for  entering  upon  it, 
however,  some  great  events  were  introductory  and  destined 
to  be  a  considerable  aid  to  it  as  well.  These  were  the  com- 
pletion of  North  Carolina's  first  two  railroads  in  March, 

199 


200  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

when  the  first  train  passed  over  the  whole  Wilmington  and 
\\'eldon  Railroad  on  the  7th  of  that  month.'  Closely  fol- 
lowing this  event,  on  the  21st  of  that  same  month,  the 
first  train  from  the  north  over  the  Raleigh  and  Gaston 
Railroad  steamed  into  the  capital,  to  rival  in  interest  the 
little  "Experimental  Railroad"  to  the  quarries  which  had 
served  so  well  to  convince  the  state  of  the  feasibility  of  these 
larger  ones.  The  Raleigh  Register  of  24th  March,  thus 
celebrates  it: 

"Phizzz — zzz — zzz" 

"This  is  as  near  as  we  can  come  in  type  towards  express- 
ing the  strange  sound  which  greeted  the  ears  of  the 
assembled  population  of  our  city  on  Saturday  evening 
last.  About  6  oclock  of  that  day,  the  first  steam  loco- 
motive that  ever  snorted  amongst  the  hills  of  Crabtree 
reached  the  limits  of  our  city  and  was  enthusiastically 
welcomed  with  every  demonstration  of  joy.  The  bells  rang, 
the  artillery  roared  and  the  people  cheered.  Huzza! 
Huzza!!  HUZZA!!!  The  Raleigh  and  Gaston  Railroad 
is  completed  and  no  mistake.  The  passenger  cars  are  ex- 
pected here  tonight,  and  we  jolly  Cits  can  now  amuse  our- 
selves with  Railroad  incidents  until  the  Assembly  meets. 
'Last  bell.  Sir,  last  bell!  Hurry,  Sir;  hurry,  Ma'am!' — 
'Where's  my  trunk  ?  I  carn't  go  till  I  see  my  trunk — a  round 
top,  kivered  with  flowered  paper.'  'All  safe.  Ma'am! — all 
in  the  baggage  car.'  Phizz-zzz-zzz  —  ding,  dong,  bell  — 
ding,  dong,  bell.  'Make  haste,  make  haste!'  'Oh  my!  Mr. 
Zeigenfuss,  I've  dropped  my  bag!'  'Get  in.  Ma'am!' 
'Gracious,  you've  almost  jerked  my  calash  off  my  head.' 
'Please  Mr.  Zig' —  Phizz  —  clack-clack-clack  —  lack-lack- 
lack — ack-ack-ack — ck-ck-ck — K-K-K — Azvay   they   go! 

"Magnificent  enterprise!  We  have  now  actual  demon- 
stration of  that,  which  no  man  would  have  believed  thirty 
years  ago  to  be  within  the  compass  of  human  power.  Truly 
has  it  been  said,  that  the  last  few  years  have  unfolded  more 

^  The  last  nail  was  driven  at  12.00  noon  and  the  first  train  from  Wilming- 
ton reached  Weldon  a  9  P.  M.  The  road  was  160$  miles  long,  the  longest  road 
then  in  all  the  world.  For  a  town  of  but  3500  people,  Wilmington's  achieve- 
ment was  most  remarkable. 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  201 

that  is  novel,  vast  and  wonderful,  than  the  whole  eighteen 
centuries  of  the  Christian  era. 

"The  Raleigh  and  Gaston  Railroad  is  86  miles  in  length, 
and  has  been  constructed  altogether  by  individual  stock- 
holders, the  State  having  uniformly  declined  embarking  in 
the  enterprise.  More  than  usual  difficulties  have  presented 
themselves  in  the  progress  of  the  w^ork,  over  and  above  the 
natural  obstacles,  but  they  have  all  vanished  before  a  de- 
termined purpose  and  never-tiring  energy.  The  whole  line 
is  now  finished,  is  said  to  be  admirably  built,  and  reflects 
high  credit  on  the  President,  Engineer,  Assistants,  and  in- 
deed, all  connected  with  its  construction.  We  hail  the 
rumbling  of  the  first  locomotive  as  the  glad  omen  of  future 
prosperity  to  our  city  and  country,  and  feel  that  we  shall 
not  be  disappointed.'" 

It  was  natural  that  Wilmington  and  Raleigh  should 
formally  celebrate  these  events,  and  the  President,  Dudley, 
should  invite  his  successor  to  join  them  at  the  former  city 
on  April  15th.  Mr.  Morehead  would  have  entered  upon 
his  campaign  sooner  had  it  not  been  for  a  critical  illness  of 
his  wife,  but  when  the  crisis  was  passed,  she  insisted  that  he 
proceed  on  his  duty.  He  had  accepted  the  Wilmington  in- 
vitation and  was  speaking  on  April  7th,  at  Germanton,  in 
Stokes  county,  where  he  himself  was  temporarily  ill.  By 
the  15th,  when  he  was  at  Wilmington  he  had  issued  the 
following  eastern  itinerary:  I.Waynesboro,  the  18th;  2. 
Kinston,  20th;  3.  Trenton,  21st;  4.  Newbern,  23rd;  5. 
Washington,  27th;  6.  Halifax,  30th;  7.  Jackson,  May  1st; 
8.  Edenton,  May  4th ;  9.  Hartford,  6th ;  10.  Elizabeth  City, 
7th;  11.  Camden  C.  H.,  8th;  12.  Currituck  C.  H.,  9th;  13. 
Windsor,  12th;  14.  Williamston,  13th;  15.  Nashville,  16th; 
16.  Louisburg,  18th;  17.  Oxford,  20th;  and  Raleigh,  May 
22nd.     The  address  at  Wilmington  in  connection  with  the 


1  Raleigh  Register,  March  24,  1840.  The  Wilmington  &  VVeldon  road  was 
161  miles  long  and  at  their  celebration  which  began  on  the  9th  and  lasted  sev- 
eral days  a  gun  was  fired  for  each  mile.  Water  from  the  Roanoke,  Tar  and 
Neuse  Rivers  were  brought  and  formally  mixed  and  Wilmington  was  elabor- 
ately illuminated  at  night.  This  was  then  the  longest  completed  road  in  the 
world.  The  Raleigh  and  Gaston  road  had  four  engines,  its  largest  one,  "Tor- 
nado," was  made  in  Richmond,  weighed  6A  tons  and  hauled  30  loaded  cars. 

The  Raleigh  people  celebrated,  in  a  splendid  three-day  session,  both  the 
completion  of  Qiedr  railroad  and  the  new  capitol,  beginning  on  June  lO,  1840. 


202  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

celebration  was  not  replied  to  by  Judge  Saunders,  who  had 
sent  his  regrets;  but  it  became  a  most  auspicious  opening 
of  the  Whig  campaign. 

One  of  the  best  contemporary  pictures  of  the  Whig 
gubernatorial  candidate,  was  that  of  a  correspondent  who 
witnessed  the  forensic  battle  between  Judge  Saunders,  his 
Democratic  rival,  and  himself  at  Snow  Hill  in  Greene 
county  on  May  14,  1840.  "This  has  been  a  great  day  for 
Snow  Hill,"  he  writes.  "Never  since  the  days  of  the 
Giants,  have  our  white  sand-banks  been  the  arena  of  so 
great  intellectual  war,  as  we  have  witnessed  today."  Then 
describing  how  the  two  rivals  came  in  after  a  56-mile  ride, 
while  the  Presidential-Elector,  James  W.  Bryan,  was  speak- 
ing, he  shows  Mr.  Morehead  opening  the  debate,  which 
"continued  until  candle-light."  "As  a  Whig,"  the  corre- 
spondent explains,  "I  may  be  pardoned  for  believing  that 
Mr.  Morehead  bore  away  the  palm.  His  broad  good- 
humored  countenance,  lighted  up  with  perfect  good  humor, 
is  occasionally  irresistible.  He  has  winning  ways  to  make 
men  love  him.  The  strength  and  energy  and  unwavering 
directness  with  which  he  marches  up  to,  and  attacks  the 
positions  of  his  adversary,  levelling  stroke  after  stroke  in 
precisely  the  right  place,  tell  with  tremendous  effect.  The 
caution  and  care  with  which  he  fortifies  his  own  positions, 
make  it  no  easy  matter  for  him  to  be  out-generalled.  The 
indignant  denunciations  which  he  pours  out  upon  the  powers 
that  be,  for  their  mal-practices,  falling  upon  minds,  believing 
or  strongly  suspecting  them  to  be  true,  uttered  with  an  air 
of  honest  scorn,  which  his  hearers  are  convinced  cannot  be 
assumed,  create  an  impression  hard  to  be  removed.  But 
he  who  supposes  that  General  Saunders  is  but  a  play-thing 
for  Mr.  Morehead,  or  for  anybody  else ;  he  who  thinks  he 
cannot  and  does  not  ably  defend  himself,  have  mistaken  the 
man.  Some  parts  of  his  speech  were  truly  eloquent,  and 
worthy  of  a  better  cause ;  and  none  will  more  cheerfully 
say  so  than  the  Whigs.  In  his  youthful  days.  Gen.  S.  was 
a  patriotic  Whig,  and  so  deeply  imbued  with  good  feelings, 
that  even  his  connection  with  this  blighting  administration 
has  not  been  able  entirely  to  destroy  them.     They  occasion- 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  203 

ally  burst  out  even  now,  and,  like  the  verdant  spots  in  the 
desert,  are  welcomed  with  heart-felt  pleasure  in  proportion 
as  they  are  unexpected  and  rare.  The  debate  was  conducted 
with  fairness — and,  with  a  single  exception,  with  courtesy 
and  kindness,  that  exception,  I  know,  a  cause  of  regret  to 
both  of  those  gentlemen,  as  it  is  to  their  friends.  Tt  was 
a  hasty  spark,  and  soon  was  cool  again.' 

"On  one  subject,  however,  Gen.  Saunders  did  not  give 
satisfaction,  even  to  his  friends.  Mr.  Morehead  stated  that 
he  had  heretofore  called  on  his  competitor  to  say  what  were 
his  views  in  relation  to  the  Public  Lands,  and  that  he  had 
declined  to  give  them.  He  today  called  emphatically  for 
his  opinion  on  the  subject,  but,  like  the  spirits  from  the  vasty 
deep,  they  would  not  come.  He  did  not  and  would  not, 
though  repeatedly  asked  to  do  so,  say  one  zvord  about  the 
matter,  only  'that  he  had  not  time  to  talk  about  it.' 

"li  we  can  judge  from  the  deportment  of  the  two  com- 
petitors, the  Whig  cause  must  succeed.  Mr.  Morehead  is 
certainly  buoyant  with  hope.  General  Saunders  may  hope, 
too,  but  if  he  does  not  carry  about  him  a  somewhat  dejected 
air,  there  is  no  truth  in  Physiognomy."^ 

Of  Mr.  Morehead,  The  Carolina  Watchman  had  re- 
cently said :  "There  are  few  men  who  can  combine  so  many 
popular  qualities  as  John  M.  Morehead.  Highly  gifted  by 
nature,  he  has  acquired  much  scientific  and  practical  infor- 
mation. With  an  eloquence,  strong,  clear  and  convincing, 
he  combines  the  rare  qualities  of  genuine  wit.  He  is  hon- 
orable to  the  'minutest  tittle — brave,  manly,  generous  and 
affable.  His  morality  has  never  been  questioned.  His 
social  qualities  would  be  a  hindrance  to  almost  anyone  else 
in  their  march  through  life,  but  no  blandishment  of  pleasure 
— no  allurement  of  ease  can  stay  his  progress  when  business 
or  duty  calls.  He  is  such  a  man  as  we  delight  to  honor, 
and  such  a  one  as  the  people  are  always  willing  to  advance. 
But  such  as  he  is,  it  must  be  said  to  his  honor,  he  has  made 
himself.  He  was  once  a  poor  boy  on  the  banks  of  the  Dan 
River,  working  to  get  a  little  money  to  enable  him  to  go  to 

1  The  Raleigh  Register,  May  19,  1840. 


204  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

a  Latin  school.  Now  he  would  confer  distinction  on  the 
office  for  which  he  is  presented  to  the  public.  We,  there- 
fore, say  that  in  this,  as  well  as  in  many  other  things,  the 
Convention  has  done  well.'"  Among  other  things  said  of 
him  were  the  following:  "Without  fear  and  without  re- 
proach;" "carries  his  recommendation  in  his  countenance;" 
"perfect  gentleman,  able  civilian  and  sound  politician;" 
"shook  hands  with  the  unwashed ;"  "the  plow-boy  of  Guil- 
ford," and  the  like. 

Without  attempting  to  follow  the  details  of  the  canvass, 
a  few  instances  may  be  used  as  illustrations : 

The  gubernatorial  canvass  in  Granville  county  seat, 
Oxford,  May  20,  1840,  is  thus  described:  "The  discussion 
of  the  candidates  lasted  till  night.  We  were  all  delighted 
beyond  our  calculations.  Judge  Saunders  opened  the  de- 
bate, spoke  three  hours  and  a  half,  and  delivered  a  speech 
that  did  him  much  credit ;  for  a  Van  Buren  man,  it  was  can- 
did and  open.  We  were  somewhat  uneasy,  and  began  to 
think  his  ingenuity  could  not  be  successfully  answered. 
But,  soon  after  Mr.  Morehead  rose  to  reply,  we  found  our 
fears  were  groundless.  His  speech  was  admitted,  on  all 
hands,  to  equal,  if  it  did  not  surpass  any  speech  ever  deliv- 
ered here.  At  times,  his  audience  were  enchained  by  his 
eloquence,  and  then  again  amused,  beyond  expression  by 
the  introduction  of  humorous  caricatures  of  the  Powers 
that  be.  In  his  replies  to  some  of  the  remarks  of  Judge 
Saunders,  he  was  very  caustic  and  severe,  which  produced 
some  interruption  by  the  Judge.  But  nothing  was  gained 
by  it,  as  Morehead's  facts  were  so  strong,  and  illustrated 
by  so  much  good  temper  and  good  humor,  that  they  could 
not  be  successfully  resisted."^ 

A  little  later,  on  Friday,  May  22,  1840,  they  met  at  the 
capital  city  and  spoke  in  the  old  Baptist  Church.  Here 
"Mr.  Morehead  opened  the  discussion,"  says  the  editor  of 
the  Register,  "and  exposed  in  a  masterly  manner  the  cor- 
ruptions and  extravagances  of  the  Administration — the  dan- 
gerous features  of  the  plan  reported  by  the  Secretary  of 

1  March,  1840. 

'Raleigh  Register,  26tli  May,   1840. 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  205 

War,  for  establishing  a  Standing  Army — which  plan,  ob- 
noxious as  it  was,  received  the  approbation  of  the  Presi- 
dent. He  pronounced  it  a  fit  instrument  to  make  slaves 
of  us  all — particularly  when  united  with  the  Sub-Treasury 
— a  measure  which  struck  at  the  very  root  of  our  credit 
system — reducing  all  prices  to  a  specie  standard,  and  en- 
abling the  President,  by  an  increase  of  his  already  immense 
patronage,  to  exercise  an  improper  and  corrupting  influence 
over  the  elections.  He  exposed  with  great  ability  the  mal- 
feasance of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  in  permitting 
defaulters  to  continue  in  office,  after  the  heaviest  defalca- 
tions, in  some  instances,  without  even  requiring  bond  for 
the  security  of  the  public  revenue.  He  replied  in  the  most 
indignant  terms,  to  the  charge  of  being  an  Abolitionist, 
which  was  brought  against  him  by  a  certain  leader  of  the 
Van  Buren  party,  in  a  meeting  held  in  this  place  a  short  time 
after  his  nomination,  and  reminding  'the  Party'  that  the 
same  process  by  which  this  Orator  sought  to  prove  him  an 
Abolitionist,  would  fix  it  on  nearly  all  their  own  leaders 
in  the  Convention.  Messrs.  Branch  (who  was  run  for  Gov- 
ernor by  the  Van  Buren  Party),  Marsteller  (Collector  of  the 
Port  of  Wilmington),  Daniel  (Judge  of  the  Supreme 
Court),  Parker  (late  Van  Buren  elector),  Quinn,  Graves, 
Morris  (run  by  'the  Party'  against  Mr.  Deberry),  Mont- 
gomery (Representative  of  'the  Party'  from  this  District), 
Kimbrough  Jones  (who  was  presiding  at  the  very  meeting 
the  Orator  was  addressing),  and  many  others,  'good  and 
true'  men  to  the  Administration,  gave  the  same  votes  that  he 
(Mr.  M.)  did.  Many  parts  of  Mr.  Morehead's  address 
were  truly  eloquent,  and  frequently  his  caustic  sarcasm 
and  pleasant  humor  elicited  the  applause  even  of  those  who 
were  opposed  to  his  political  principles.  We  do  not  recol- 
lect ever  to  have  listened  to  a  more  powerful  and  interesting 
political  speech.  The  open,  candid  countenance  of  the 
speaker,  the  earnestness  of  his  manner,  united  with  the 
strength  and  clearness  of  his  arguments,  were  calculated  to 
produce  conviction  on  the  minds  of  all  who  were  not  blinded 
by  prejudice." 

Judge  Saunders'  speech  is  then  described,  after  which. 


206  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

"Mr.  Morehead  rejoined  briefly,  when  a  humorous  sparring 
between  the  candidates,  producing  much  amusement,  con- 
cluded the  conflict  of  the  day.'" 

In  June  he  began  his  western  itinerary  in  the  county  next 
north  of  Guilford. 

A  good  description  of  Mr.  Morehead's  style  in  speak- 
ing, during  the  gubernatorial  campaign,  has  come  down  to 
us  from  an  "Observer,"  who  happened  to  hear  the  two  at 
Wentworth,  Rockingham  county,  the  boyhood  home  of  the 
Whig  candidate:  "Mr.  Morehead  is  more  rapid  in  his 
speaking,  yet  his  enunciation  is  equally  distinct  and  impres- 
sive as  his  opponent's.  His  language  is  strong  and  forcible, 
and  never  wanting  at  his  call; — unlike  the  spirits  of  Hot- 
spur— the  words  will  'come  at  his  bidding.'  By  his  great 
command  of  language,  with  the  fact  of  his  speaking  more 
rapidly  than  Mr.  Saunders,  he  is  enabled  to  say  much  more 
in  a  given  time.  His  gestures  are  better,  more  varied,  and 
more  energetic  than  his  competitor's ;  and  on  the  whole  he  is 
a  more  interesting  speaker :  but  decidedly  his  superior  in  the 
opposite  qualities  of  pathos  and  humor.  Indeed  these  last 
seem  to  be  totally  zvithout  the  range  of  Judge  Saunders, 
whether  from  choice  or  necessity,  I  know  not:  while  Mr. 
Morehead  is  peculiarly  happy  in  both.  Each  of  them 
spoke  about  three  hours.  .  .  .  Mr.  Morehead  made  an 
able  reply ;  in  which  it  appeared,  as  the  Danville  Reporter 
remarked — he  had  Morehead,  a  better  head,  and  a  better 
cause,  than  Judge  Saunders.  .  .  .  and  the  denouement, 
when  he  spoke  personally  of  himself,  was  truly  pathetic. 
He  is,  I  understand,  a  native  of  this  county,  and  resided 
at  this  place  when,  poor  and  friendless,  he  commenced  the 
practice  of  law ;  and  in  alluding  to  this  circumstance  and 
other  personal  circumstances,  he  could  not  well  have  been 
surpassed.  It  is  said  that  one  'cannot  speak  eloquently  of 
self ;'  but  in  the  face  of  this  maxim,  I  say  he  was  truly  elo- 
quent; never  were  my  feelings  so  completely  carried  with 
another's.  He  conformed,  too,  to  the  Horatian  precept  in 
the  'Art  of  Poetry,'  'Si  vis  me  flere,  delendum  est,  primiun 

1  Raleigh  Register,  26th  May,  1840. 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  207 

ipsi  tibi/  'if  you  would  have  me  weep  it  behooves  you  first 
to  weep.'  Mr.  Morehead  did  actually  shed  tears,  and  the 
sympathetic  tears  stood  in  the  eyes  of  many  of  the  audience. 

The  efifect  was  electric;  and  I  will  venture  to  say  there 
was  scarcely  one  who  did  not  feel  the  force  of  this  eloquent 
appeal."^ 

By  the  midde  of  June,  the  Guilford  Tippecanoe  Club  had 
built  a  portable  "log  cabin"  with  "Hard  Cider"  attachment 
and  were  familiarizing  themselves  with  such  songs  as  the 
following,  as  were  all  other  Whig  districts  in  the  state : 

"Harrison  and  Tyler  for  the  Union 

AND 

"Morehead  for  the  'Old  North' 

('Rosin  The  Bow') 

"Old  Rip  will  fight  under  this  banner, 

With  the  pluck  of  a  soldier  that's  tnie : 
He'll  not  be  the  hindmost  in  battle 
With  him  of  old  Tippecanoe. 

"Old  Rip  will  soon  wake  from  his  napping, 

And  make  every  spoiler  look  blue, 
With  a  hearty  hurrah  for  Jack  Tyler 
And  a  round  for  old  Tippecanoe ! 

"Old  Rip  will  call  at  his  log  cabins. 
And  rouse  out  the  voters  a  few. 
Whose  thunder  will  tell  next  November 
For  the  hero  of  Tippecanoe. 

"And  when  he's  fixed  up  in  the  White  House, 
The  farmer  and  patriot  true, — 
We'll  drink  in  the  mug  of  hard  cider, 
The  health  of  old  Tippecanoe. 

"Then,  adieu  to  your  Swartnants  and   Prices, 
And  little  leg-trousers,  too ! 
He'll  sack  every  rogue  of  a  spoiler — 
He  sacked  'em  at  Tippecanoe. 

"In  the  halls  of  our  wise  legislators, 

To  his  country  he  ever  proved  true ; 
At  Meigs,  at  the  Thames  and  the  Raisin, 
And  also  at  Tippecanoe. 

^  Greensboro  Patriot,  16th  June,  1840. 


208  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

"Then,  success  to  the  Son  of  old  Guilford ! 

The  old  Rip,  ever  faithful  and  true; 
'Old  Virginny,'  success  to  thy  Tyler ! 
And  triumph  to  Tippecanoe  !"^ 

Guilford  sent  a  fine  delegation  on  July  4th,  to  the  great 
Whig  celebration  at  Salisbury,  composed  of  the  Guilford 
Tippecanoe  Club  and  the  Guilford  Guards,  who,  at  6  A.M. 
of  the  2nd,  with  their  Log  Cabin  on  wheels  and  about  2000 
people  went  to  Edgeworth  School,  where  the  ladies  of  the 
School,  headed  by  Miss  Hoye,  presented  the  Club  with  a 
beautiful  banner,  on  one  side  of  which  was  a  Log  Cabin 
with  "Republican  Simplicity  vs.  Loco  Foco  Arrogance"  and 
on  the  reverse  side  a  barrel,  presumably  of  hard  cider, 
surrounded  by  a  green  wreath  and  thirteen  stars,  w'ith 
"Once  more  to  the  rescue,  dear  friends,  once  more ;"  while 
the  staff  was  surmounted  by  a  model  of  a  plow.  The  pro- 
cession then  stopped  in  front  of  Dr.  Mebane's,  where  the 
Guards  were  hkewise  honored  with  a  banner,  presented  by 
Miss  Mary  Corinna  Morehead,  as  the  work  of  herself,  her 
sister  and  Miss  M.  E.  Mebane.  It  had  on  a  white  field  an 
American  Eagle,  with  a  scroll  in  its  beak — "On  to  Victory," 
and  on  the  reverse  the  legend  "Merit  Wins  the  Prize"  en- 
closed in  an  elaborate  wreath.  The  presentation  address  of 
both  Miss  Hoye  and  Miss  Morehead  were  responded  to  by 
Mr.  Ralph  Gorrell  and  Mr.  John  A.  Gilmer,  respectively.- 
The  procession  contained  the  Log  Cabin,  drawn  by  six  white 
horses,  and  the  chimney  was  made  to  emit  smoke,  while  a 
barrel  marked  "Hard  Cider"  was  strapped  on  behind  and 
the  cabin  draped  with  deer  skins,  raccoon  skins,  buck  horns, 
and  many  relics  of  Guilford  battle  ground,  from  which  the 
poles  of  which  the  cabin  was  made  were  cut.  They  also 
had  a  canoe  drawn  by  four  white  horses.  Other  WHiigs 
followed  with  large  blue  silken  sheet  variously  inscribed 
on  one  side:  "The  Sons  of  Old  Guilford,"  "Against  the 


1  Clippings  in  possession  of  the  Misses  Caldwell,  Greensboro,  N.  C.  "Old 
Rip"  of  course  is  "Rip  Van  Winkle,"  Senator  Preston's  (S.  C.)  jeering  name 
for  North  Carolina  when   she  refused  to  endorse  nullification. 

"  Greensboro  Patriot,  14th  July,  1840.  These  flags  are  now  in  possession 
of  the  Greensboro  Public  Library.  Miss  Mary  Corrina  Morehead  was  but  fif- 
teen years  old  and  her  sister,  presumably  Miss  Letitia  Harper,  was  two  years 
older. 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  209 

Standing  Army,"  "Against  the  Sub-Treasury,"  "Against 
Van  Buren;"  and  on  the  other  "The  Sons  of  Old  Guilford," 
"For  Harrison  and  Tyler,"  "For  John  M.  Morehead," 
"For  Retrenchment  and  Reform."  This  was  the  spirited 
part  they  took  in  the  great  Salisbury  celebration  of  about 
12,000  people  on  July  4th.  They  were  helping  transform 
the  Van  Buren  Baltimore  Republican  sneer,  that  if  the 
Harrisburg  nominee.  Gen.  Harrison,  "had  a  barrel  of  hard 
cider  and  a  pension  of  $2000,  he  would  sit  the  rest  of  his 
life  contentedly  in  a  log  cabin,"  into  a  slogan  of  victory! 
And  this  was  a  sample  of  what  was  occurring  in  most  coun- 
ties of  the  nation! 

On  Mr.  Morehead's  return  from  his  mountain  canvass 
on  July  6th  he  answered  some  detractors  as  to  his  vote  on 
the  laws  prohibiting  immigration  of  free  negroes  into  the 
State,  in  1826;  he  said  he  voted  against  the  bill  first  because 
of  the  5th  section,  but  on  third  reading  he  succeeded  in  get- 
ting that  removed  and  another  Wilmington  man  secured 
the  removal  of  three  other  sections,  whereupon  he  voted 
for  the  bill  as  it  was  passed  into  law.  Incidentally,  he 
said  the  Salisbury  meeting  was  the  largest  meeting  ever 
held  in  the  State  and  never  had  such  enthusiasm  pervaded 
the  Whigs.' 

Then  on  August  13th,  came  the  state  elections,  and,  said 
The  Patriot:  "The  Old  North  State  Greets  the  Union 
With  the  Thrilling  Forces  of  Triumph  ! !"  "To  the 
eminently  practical  mind  and  eloquence  of  John  M.  More- 
head,  our  distinguished  Countryman,  more  than  to  any 
other  man  in  the  State,  is  to  be  attributed  this  triumph  of 
TRUTH  — of  Principle  — of  THE  PEOPLE!"  Guilford 
went  1742  majority  and  the  state  went  8080  majority  for 
him,  or  44,508  votes  with  both  houses  of  the  Legislature.- 
Thereupon  his  old  county  of  Rockingham  on  September 
19th  announced  a  festival  in  honor  of  their  old-time  son 

1  The  Patriot,  Aug.   11,  1840. 

-  On  the  day  of  his  election  a  second  son,  James  Turner  Morehead,  named 
after  his  brother,  and  bearing  the  same  name  as  his  distant  cousin,  Ex-Governor 
James  Turner  Morehead  of  Kentucky,  was  born. 

Governor-elect  Morehead  stimulated  almost  every  enterprise  he  came  in 
contact  with.  Amongst  multitudes  of  enterprises  he  had  a  share  in  was  the 
Greensboro  Tannery,  owned  by  Morehead  &  Willis,  who  on  Sept.  8,  1840,  ad- 
vertised for  an  e-xpert  in  that  line. 


210  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

and  invited  all  the  surrounding  counties'  Whigs  to  join  them 
at  Wentworth  on  the  29th  of  October.  The  Caswell  County 
Whigs  announced  a  similar  program  for  October  1st,  and 
the  Patriot  and  other  papers  which  had  headed  their 
columns  with:  "For  Governor,  John  M.  Morehead.  For 
President,  William  Henry  Harrison.  For  Vice-President, 
John  Tyler,"  now  headed  them  only  with  the  Presidential 
names  in  preparation  for  the  November  election;  and  on 
October  5th,  the  Whigs  held  a  great  convention  in  Raleigh 
in  which  delegations  from  the  counties  vied  each  other  in 
its  most  picturesque  banners  and  emblems.  "Whig  in  1776 
and  Whig  in  1840"  was  one  of  the  most  common.  On  the 
second  day  of  the  Convention  it  was  that  there  was  sung 
a  song,  written  to  a  favorite  concert  air  of  several  young 
ladies  who  requested  it  of  Judge  Gaston,  the  now  famous 
song  of  the  commonwealth,  "The  Old  North  State  Forever," 
which  was  thereupon  first  published  in  The  Raleigh 
Register: 

"The  Old  North  State  Fore\'er 

"Carolina  !    Carolina !    Heaven's  blessings  attend  her  ! 
While  we  live,  we  will  cherish  and  love  and  defend  her; 
Tho'  the  scomer  may  sneer  at,  and  witlings  defame  her,^ 
Our  hearts  swell  with  gladness,  whenever  we  name  her. 

Hurrah  !    Hurrah  !    The  Old  North  State  forever ! 

Hurrah  !    Hurrah  !    The  good  Old  North  State  ! 

"Tho'  she  envies  not  others  their  merited  glory, 
Say,  whose  name  stands  the  foremost  in  Liberty's  story? 
Tho'  too  true  to  herself,  e'er  to  crouch  to  oppression. 
Who  can  yield  to  just  rule  more  loyal  submission? 
Hurrah!  &c. 

"Plain  and  artless  her  sons,  but  whose  doors  open  faster. 
At  the  knock  of  the  stranger,  or  the  tale  of  disaster? 
How  like  to  the  rudeness  of  their  dear  native  mountains. 
With  rich  ore  in  their  bosoms,  and  life  in  their  fountains? 
Hurrah !  etc. 


^  This  doubtless  referred  to  the  gibe  of  Preston  of  South  Carolina,  who  was 
incensed  because  North  Carolina  wouldn't  follow  his  own  state  in  nullifying 
measures  a  half  dozen  years  before  and  called  her  "Rip  Van  Winkle." 


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WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  211 

"And  her  daughters,  the  Queen  of  the  forest  resembling, 
So  graceful,  so  constant,  yet  to  gentlest  breath  trembling, 
And  true  lightwood  at  heart,  let  the  match  be  applied  them. 
How  they  kindle  and  flame  ?    Oh  none  know  but  who've  tried  them  ! 
Hurrah !  etc. 

"Then  let  all  who  with  us,  love  the  land  that  we  live  in, 
(As  happy  a  region  as  on  this  side  of  Heaven) 
Where  Plenty  and  Freedom,  Love  and  Peace  smile  before  us. 
Raise  aloud,  raise  together,  the  heart-thrilling  chorus — 

Hurrah  !    Hurrah  !    The  Old  North  State  forever ! 

Hurrah  !     Hurrah  !     The  good  Old  North  State ! 

The  big  Wentworth  festival  followed  and  it  was  here 
that  Governor-elect  Morehead  explained  why,  although  he 
had  canvassed  the  state  "from  the  mountains  to  the  sea," 
he  did  not  set  out  on  the  campaign  as  early  as  he  expected 
to  do,  the  reason  being  that  she  who  was  dearer  than  life  to 
him  "was  sick  unto  death;"  that  as  soon  as  the  physician 
said  she  might  live,  and  before  she  could  turn  herself  in  bed, 
she  said  to  him:  "Go  and  do  your  duty  to  your  country!" 
Thereupon  the  people  enthusiastically  gave  three  times  three 
cheers  for  Mrs.  Morehead.  Again,  like  Homer,  Rocking- 
ham tried  to  claim  him  as  her  native  son — which  he  was,  es- 
sentially, since  he  was  but  a  two-years-old  babe  when  his 
family  moved  across  the  river  a  few  miles  into  another 
state. 

The  fame  of  the  new  Governor-elect  spread  over  the 
country  and  an  elegant  new  steam-boat  launched  at  Cin- 
cinnati, was  christened  "Gov.  Morehead"  in  his  honor.^  At 
a  dinner  to  Secretary  of  the  Navy  Badger,  in  Raleigh,  Con- 
gressman W.  P.  Mangum's  Washington  letter  was  read  and 
it  contained  a  toast  to  "John  M.  Morehead — the  able  and 
patriotic  Executive;  his  friends  will  not  forget  him — his 
enemies  cannot."  To  this  Governor  Morehead  responded  in 
a  happy  vein,  a  part  of  which  was  prophetic,  namely,  when 
he  said  he  "trusted  that  he  should  in  his  effort  to  direct 
Internal  Improvements  of  the  Old  North,  and  to  cultivate 

1  Greensboro  Patriot,  8th  December,  1840.  This  may  be  true;  but  when 
one  knows  that  Kentucky  had  Governor  James  T.  Morehead  from  1834  to  1836, 
only  four  years  before,  one  wonders  whether  it  might  not  be  named  for  him, 
especially  as  he  was  slated  for  the  U.  S.  Senate  as  colleague  of  Henry  Clay,  at 
that  time. 


212  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

its  intellectual  condition,  so  entitle  himself  to  their  respect, 
that  neither  they,  their  children,  nor  their  children's  chil- 
dren could  forget  him.'"^  And  he  might  have  added — 
"posterity." 

Following  these  festivals  came  the  national  election  in 
which  "Old  Guilford,"  "The  Old  Dominion,"  as  it  was  often 
called  by  the  Whigs,  even  increased  the  Harrison  vote  to 
1886,  or  144  more  than  for  Morehead.  The  Whigs  swept 
the  land.  At  the  Assembly  in  Raleigh,  which  then  met, 
Mangum  and  Graham  were  made  national  Senators.  The 
electoral  college  of  the  State  gave  all  fifteen  votes  to  Har- 
rison, the  majority  in  the  commonwealth  being  12,594.  The 
new  Whig  Assembly  was  the  first  to  meet  in  the  new 
capitol  and  the  new  census  appeared,  showing  North  Caro- 
lina with  far  the  smallest  increase  in  population  since  1790, 
namely,  but  18,469 — about  one-fifth  of  that  of  the  preceding 
census,  one-fourth  of  that  of  1820  and  nearly  the  same  ratio 
for  those  of  1800  and  1810.  The  increase  in  slaves 
was  but  455 ;  while  there  were  22,724  free  persons  of  color. 
The  white  population  was  487,298  and  the  slave  population 
246,917 — a  total  of  756,939.-  The  financial  disorganization 
of  the  past  decade  and  the  attractions  of  the  west  accounted 
for  this  meager  increase ;  and  consequently  the  great  Whig 
revolution  and  the  great  impetus  to  the  railroad  movement. 
This  was  the  condition  that  accompanied  the  Guilford 
county  Governor-elect  and  his  family  at  the  close  of  1840, 
when  they  arrived  in  Raleigh  to  locate  in  the  renovated  and 
restored  "Government  House,"  at  the  foot  of  Fayetteville 
Street,  used  for  the  past  decade  by  the  Assembly,  since  the 
destruction  of  the  capitol  in  1831,  and  now  to  again  become 
the  Executive  Mansion.  For  the  new  Whig  Assembly, 
whose  session  was  now  nearly  over,  had  moved  up  to  capitol 


^  Greensboro  Patriot,  23rd  Nov.,  1841.  The  Governor's  salary  at  this  time 
was  $2000  only.  The  Justices  of  the  Supreme  Court  received  $500  more.  The 
free  white  population  of  North  Carolina  at  this  time  was  484,870  and  the  free 
colored  population,  22,722,  a  rather  strikingly  large  number,  while  the  slaves 
numbered  245,817 — practically  half  of  the  white  number.  The  total  of  all  was 
753,419. 

^  North  Carolina's  increase  was  2%,  the  same  as  Virginia,  South  Carolina 
and  Delaware.  Marj-land  was  still  lower  and  Connecticut  lower  than  Maryland. 
These  were  lowest  of  all  the  states.  The  great  increases  were  in  the  west  and 
the  greatest  in  the  northwest,  Michigan  being  as  high  as  590%,  altho'  Arkansas 
and  Mississippi  were  very  high. 


The   Governor's  Mansion,  1840 

at  tlie  foot  of   Fayetteville  St.,  Raleigh 

IJrawiiig   by   Miss   Einnia    Morehead   Whitfield,    Kichmond,    Va.,    from   a 

photograph   in  the  Hall  of  History,  Raleigh 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  213 

square  in  preparation  for  their  new  Governor.  Nor  did 
the  Greensboro  Patriot  think  much  of  the  work  of  that  As- 
sembly; but  spoke  of  it  as  an  "honorable,  dignified,  fidgety, 
diddling,  do-nothing  assemblage,"  whose  greatest  achieve- 
ment was  adjournment.  It  did,  however,  come  to  the  relief 
of  Governor  Dudley's  railroad  with  a  $300,000  loan  and 
support  of  the  credit  of  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston ;  created 
three  new  counties  in  the  west ;  improved  the  school  laws ; 
provided  for  a  State  Library,  and  last,  but  not  least,  im- 
proved the  incorporation  act  of  1836  of  the  North  Caro- 
lina Railroad  Company,  providing  for  individual  subscrip- 
tion of  $1,000,000  to  build  a  railroad  from  Beaufort  Harbor 
to  the  Wilmington  road  presumably  at  Waynesboro 
(Goldsboro).  The  asylum  acts — orphan  and  insane — did 
not  pass.  But,  all  this  was  under  the  close  of  Governor 
Dudley's  term. 

The  new  capitol,  the  stately  Greek  temple  that  still 
stands  stained  with  over  four-score  years  of  time,  was  so 
nearly  complete  that  not  only  the  new  Whig  Assembly  was 
the  first  legislature  to  meet  in  it;  but  on  January  1,  1841,  at 
high  noon,  the  ancient  oaks  of  the  original  forest  which 
surrounded  it  witnessed  the  gathering  in  the  hall  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  Governor  Dudley  leading,  in  which 
the  first  inauguration  of  the  chief  executive  was  to  take 
place.  Chief  Justice  Ruffin,  whose  bronze  statue  now  graces 
the  Supreme  Court  building,  administered  the  oath  to  the 
second  Whig  chief  of  the  state,  whereupon  Governor 
Morehead  delivered  a  brief  inaugural. 

"Gentlemen  of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Commons,"  he 
began,  "In  obedience  to  the  requisition  of  the  Constitution, 
I  have  appeared  before  you  and  have  taken  the  oath  pre- 
scribed, before  I  enter  upon  the  duties  of  the  Executive 
Office,  to  which  I  have  been  called  by  my  fellow  citizens  of 
North  Carolina. 

"I  assure  you  it  is  with  unfeigned  diffidence  that  I  enter 
upon  the  discharge  of  these  high  duties ;  and  if  I  may  not 
hope  to  bring  as  much  ability  into  the  Executive  Chair  as 
now  leaves  it,  I  will  yet  endeavor,  in  the  discharge  of  my 
official  duties,  to  rival  the  zeal  of  him  whose  seat  I  am  now 


214  JOHN  ]\IOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

about  to  occupy:  And  I  shall  be  more  than  fortunate,  if 
at  the  expiration  of  my  term  of  service,  it  may  be  said  of 
me,  as  it  may  be  well  said  of  him,  'Well  done  thou  good 
and  faithful.' 

"I  desire  to  discharge  my  duties  as  it  becomes  the  Gov- 
ernor of  the  State,  and  of  the  whole  State;  I  desire  to  be  the 
Executive  of  the  People,  and  of  the  zvhole  People;  and  it 
shall  be  my  constant  endeavor  so  to  discharge  those  duties, 
that  the  laws  suggested  by  your  wisdom — and  by  the  wis- 
dom of  those  who  have  gone  on  before  you — shall  be  so 
administered  that  all  the  beneficial  results  anticipated  may 
be  fully  realized. 

"I  shall  be  happy  to  cooperate  with  you  in  bringing  into 
active  operation  all  the  elements  of  greatness  and  of  useful- 
ness with  which  our  state  is  so  abundantly  blest. 

"Other  States  have  outstripped  us  in  the  career  of  im- 
provement, and  in  the  development  of  their  national 
resources — but  North  Carolina  will  stand  a  favorable  com- 
parison with  most  of  her  sister  States,  in  her  national 
advantages — her  great  extent  of  fertile  soil — her  great  va- 
riety of  production — her  exhaustless  deposits  of  mineral 
wealth,  her  extraordinary  water-power,  inviting  to  Manu- 
facturers— all,  all  combine  to  give  her  advantages  that  few 
other  states  possess. 

"Whatever  measures  you  may  adopt  to  encourage  Agri- 
culture, to  induce  the  Husbandman,  while  he  toils  and 
sweats,  to  hope  that  his  labors  will  be  duly  rewarded ; 
whatever  measures  you  may  adopt  to  facilitate  Commerce, 
and  to  aid  Industry  in  all  the  departments  of  life  to  reap 
its  full  reward,  will  meet  with  my  cordial  approbation. 

"And  I  am  happy  to  find  that  the  action  of  one  of  your 
bodies  has  anticipated  a  suggestion  that  I  had  intended  to 
make:  I  allude  to  the  subject  of  opening  Roanoke  Inlet. 
This  is  a  work,  if  practicable,  of  the  first  importance  to 
North  Carolina;  it  is  a  work  in  which  the  State  is  deeply 
interested — recent  surveys,  conducted  by  scientific  skill, 
have  shown  that  the  work  is  practicable,  and  if  so,  it  should 
be  certainly  executed. 

"The  Commerce  and  Navigation  of  the  Nation  would 


The   Caimtol 

Raleigh,    North    ("arolina 

as  it  is  today,  unchanged   since   1S4U 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  215 

be  greatly  benefited  by  it — and  if  there  be  any  work  which 
the  Federal  Government  ought  to  execute,  and  which  steers 
clear  of  all  Constitutional  objection,  this  is  the  work. 
Thousands  of  dollars  are  yearly  spent  to  improve  the  navi- 
gation of  rivers  within  the  limits  of  some  of  the  States, 
whilst  this  would  be  an  improvement  by  which  the  Atlantic 
itself  would  be  introduced  within  our  borders. 

"If  the  General  Government  cannot  execute  a  work  of 
this  description,  or  if  it  can  and  will  not,  then  do  we  derive 
but  little  advantage  from  our  Federal  association ;  we 
should  not  ask  the  execution  of  this  work  by  the  General 
Government  as  a  boon,  but  demand  it  as  a  right,  and  I  hope 
the  time  is  not  far  distant,  when  the  application  of  North 
Carolina  to  the  General  Government  for  her  rights,  will  not 
be  disregarded;  therefore,  whatever  duties  you  may  choose 
to  assign  me,  to  bring  this  subject  to  the  attention  of  the 
General  Government,  will  be  most  cheerfully  performed. 
As  there  may  be  another  session  of  Congress  before  our 
legislative  body  may  meet  again,  and  as  is  probable  no 
action  will  be  taken  on  the  subject  at  this  session  of  Con- 
gress, I  would  respectfully  suggest  that  any  communication, 
which  you  may  direct  to  be  made,  should  be  made  to  the 
next  session  of  Congress  as  well  as  to  this. 

"It  is  equally  our  duty,  fellow  citizens,  to  attend  to  our 
moral  and  intellectual  cultivation,  for  upon  this  depends 
our  continuance  as  a  free  and  happy  people.  Our  State 
possesses  in  her  University,  an  institution  that  will  com- 
pare favorably  with  any  other  in  the  Union,  at  which  a 
portion  of  our  youth  can  be  well  educated — we  have  a  num- 
ber of  Academies  and  other  high  Schools  at  which  another 
portion  can  receive  excellent  educations;  but  it  is  to  our 
Common  Schools,  in  which  every  child  can  receive  the  rudi- 
ments of  an  education — that  our  education  should  be  mainly 
directed.  Our  system  is  yet  in  its  infancy — it  will  require 
time  and  experience  to  give  to  it  its  greatest  perfection ;  our 
Literary  Fund  should  be  carefully  husbanded  and  increased, 
and  I  doubt  not,  in  due  time,  the  Legislative  wisdom  of  the 
State  will  perfect  the  system  as  far  as  human  sagacity  can 
do  it.     And  no  part  of  my  official  duty  will  be  performed 


216  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

with  more  pleasure  than  that  part,  which  may  aid  in  bring- 
ing about  that  happy  result. 

"Nothing  so  surely  indicates  the  happiness  and  pros- 
perity of  a  people,  as  numerous  School-houses  well  filled, 
during  the  week;  and  Churches  well  crowded  on  the  Sab- 
bath, and  the  latter  is  sure  to  follow  the  former.  If  we 
desire  to  perpetuate  our  glorious  political  institutions,  we 
must  give  to  all  our  people  moral  and  intellectual  cultivation 
— that  man  who  improves  his  intellect  for  six  days  of  the 
week,  and,  on  the  seventh,  endeavors  to  give  it  the  proper 
direction,  from  the  precepts  of  our  Holy  Religion,  who 
learns  to  do  unto  others,  as  he  would  they  should  do  unto 
him — that  man  icill  never  become  a  Tyrant — and  lie  can 
never  he  made  a  slave. 

''Believing,  as  I  do,  that  comity  and  good  feeling  should 
exist  between  the  General  Government  and  all  the  members 
of  the  Confederacy — I  shall  endeavor,  while  I  have  the 
power  to  preside  over  North  Carolina,  on  every  occasion 
that  may  offer,  to  meet  them  with  that  courtesy  to  which 
they  are  justly  entitled — and  which  a  due  self-respect  and 
the  dignity  of  our  State  require  should  be  shown. 

"I  will  cheerfully  yield  to  the  General  Government  all 
the  powers  to  which  it  is  entitled,  from  a  fair  and  proper 
construction  and  interpretation  of  the  Constitution — while, 
on  the  other  hand,  I  shall  carefully  maintain,  protect  and 
defend  the  rights  which  pertain  to  our  own  State. 

"I  shall  be  extremely  careful  to  see  that  North  Caro- 
lina, when  she  speaks  in  her  sovereign  character,  has  a 
right  to  speak — and  when  she  does  so  speak,  through  her 
great  seal — the  emblem  of  her  sovereignty — zvhile  I  have 
the  honor  to  control  it — it  must  be — it  shall  be  respected.^ 

"The  days  of  our  political  existence,  under  our  present 
happy  form  of  government,  are  numbered,  when  States  shall 
permit  their  sovereignty  to  be  contemned  and  their  great 
seals  to  be  scoffed  at  and  disregarded. 

"In  a  word,  fellow-citizens,  whatever  measures  you  may 


iThese   expressions    were    due    to    many    acts    of    Presidents    Jackson    and 
van  Huren,  which  were  the  cause  of  the  Whig  uprising. 


Governor   John    Motley   Mc;reiiead 

in  1841 

From   a   print   in   possession  of   Lindsay   Patterson 

Winston-Saleni,   N.    C. 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  217 

adopt  to  advance  the  prosperity  of  our  State,  and  the  happi- 
ness of  our  citizens,  will  meet  with  my  hearty  cooperation. 

"I  cannot  conclude  my  remarks  without  congratulating 
you  and  myself,  upon  the  time  and  place  of  our  meeting. 
This  splendid  edifice  has  nearly  approached  its  completion. 
You  are  the  first  legislative  body  that  ever  had  the  honor 
to  assemble  in  its  splendid  Halls.  I  am  the  first  Executive 
that  ever  had  the  honor  to  be  installed  within  its  durable 
walls.  It  will  endure  as  a  monument,  for  ages  to  come,  of 
the  munificence,  liberality  and  taste  of  the  age  in  which  we 
live.  There  is  a  moral  effect  produced  by  the  erection  of 
such  an  edifice  as  this — it  will  serve,  in  the  chain  of  time,  to 
link  the  past  with  the  future.  And  if  ever  that  proud  spirit 
that  has  ever  characterized  us — which  has  ever  been  ready 
to  assert  its  rights  and  avenge  its  wrongs — which  exhibited 
itself  at  the  Regulation  Battle  of  1770 — which  burnt  with 
more  brilliance  at  the  Mecklenburg  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence in  1775 — and  which  totally  declared  for  Independence 
in  1776 — even  if  that  proud  spirit  shall  become  craven  in 
time  to  come,  and  shall  not  dare  animate  the  bosom  of  a 
freeman — let  it  look  upon  this  monument — and  remember 
the  glorious  institutions  under  zvhich  its  foundations  zvere 
laid,  and  the  noble  people  by  zvhom  it  zvas  reared — and 
then  let  it  become  a  slave  if  it  can. 

"May  it  endure  for  ages  to  come — may  it  endure  until 
time  itself  shall  grow  old — may  a  thousand  years  find  these 
Halls  still  occupied  by  Freemen,  legislating  for  a  free  and 
happy  people.'" 

The  new  Governor  in  a  new  capitol,  representing  a  new 
political  life  in  the  state,  was  now  about  to  fulfil  so  far  as 
was  in  his  power,  the  ideals  he  had  voiced  in  this  body  in 
the  old  capitol  twenty  years  before,  with  such  vigor  and 
determination  that  he  was  now  the  first  choice  of  that  west 
as  soon  as  it  found  a  voice.  He  had  been  twenty-five  years 
old  then;  now  he  was  forty-five,  and  was  a  national  figure. 
His  predecessor,  while  a  Whig,  was  essentially  a  compromise 
eastern  man ;  but  John  Motley  Morehead  was  no  compro- 

^  Raleigh  Register,  Sth  Jan.,  1841,  and  elsewhere. 


218  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

mise  candidate.     He  had  won  North  Carolina,  as  a  Whig 
and  man  of  the  west,  in  the  greatest  political  contest  ever 
waged  in  the  commonwealth.     Not  that  he  was  the  first 
chief  executive  from  the  west ;  for  six  western  men  had 
been  Governor  of  North  Carolina  before  him,  out  of  the 
twenty-six  under  the  commonwealth.     "Old  Guilford"  had 
furnished  one  of  them,  Alexander  Martin,  whose  home  was 
its  first  county  seat,  and  he  had  served  twice  and  was  a 
Federalist;  but  Governor  Morehead  was  the  first  western 
man  since  Governor  Martin,  who  had  not  been  chosen  as  a 
Democrat,  or,  as  they  were  often  styled  in  earlier  days, 
"Democratic    Republican."     His    election,    therefore,    was 
more  of  a  revolution  in  North  Carolina  than  any  event  since 
the  era  of  independence  began;  and  this  was  what  attracted 
national  attention  to  him,  and  likewise  gave  him  a  new 
prestige  over  other  executives  of  the  state,  because  it  made 
him  the  recognized  political  leader  as  well  as  Governor.     A 
North  Carolina  chief  executive  was  severely  an  executive, 
with  almost  no  other  powers ;  the  receptacle  of  power  was 
in    the    Assembly.     As    also    a    political    leader,    however, 
Governor  Morehead  acquired  more  power  potentially  than 
previous  executives ;  and  to  this  was  added  the  force  of  his 
unique  personality  and  his  infectious  enthusiasm.    Since  this 
Assembly  would  not  meet  again,  and  the  next  in  two  years 
might  not  be  Whig,  his  duties  for  that  period  would  be 
purely  executive,  and  he  was  handicapped  at  the  beginning. 
One  of  the  most  interesting  of  these  latter,  was  a  requi- 
sition on  him  from  Governor  A.  G.  McNutt  of  Mississippi, 
first  presented  to  him  while  he  was  attending  the  inaugu- 
ration of  President  William  Henry  Harrison  at  Washington 
on  March  4th.     He  then  drew  attention  of  the  Mississippi 
agent  to  grave  defects  in  the  requisition  for  a  man  charged 
with  stealing  and  carrying  off  a  slave,  such  as  no  copy  of 
an  indictment  nor  the  use  of  the  state  seal  as  required  by 
national  law.     The  requisition  was  dated  February   10th, 
and  on  March  17th  it  was  again  sent  by  the  agent  with  the 
defects  still  existing,  whereupon  Governor  Morehead  made 
a  detailed  reply  on  these  points  and  sent  them  to  Jackson. 
From  that  time  on  no  less  than  twenty  papers  and  letters 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  219 

passed  between  the  two  executives.  On  October  7,  1841, 
Governor  Morehead  said,  in  a  letter:  "Therefore  the  Execu- 
tive of  Mississippi  has  no  right  to  make  the  demand,  nor 
have  I  the  right  to  make  the  arrest."  For  as  the  case  pro- 
ceeded it  became  evident  that  not  only  were  the  papers 
defective,  but  that  it  was  a  case  of  persecution  for  another 
cause.  The  matter  covered  almost  a  year,  and  while  it  was 
in  course  Governor  Tucker  became  the  Mississippi  execu- 
tive, and  in  a  letter  of  January  31,  1842,  announced  the 
voluntary  surrender  of  the  man  Sanders  which  closed  the 
incident.  The  case  was  discussed  in  the  Senate  of  Mis- 
sisippi  during  that  long  period,  when  Senator  Ives  of  that 
state,  in  defending  the  course  of  the  North  Carolina  execu- 
tive, said  that  he  had  the  honor  of  a  personal  acquaintance 
with  him  and  that  if  the  Whigs  recovered  their  ascendency 
of  early  1841,  Governor  Morehead  "might  yet  preside  over 
a  republic  as  well  as  a  state !"  This  seems  to  have  been 
the  first  suggestion  of  his  name  for  the  Presidency  of  the 
United  States,  but  it  was  by  no  means  to  be  the  only  one. 
This,  however,  was  some  time  after  his  inauguration  in 
January,  1841. 

With  this  latter  event  came  news  in  February,  that  specie 
payments  would  be  resumed  in  North  Carolina  and  her 
sister  states  northward,  Maryland  taking  the  lead,  as  if  to  be 
ready  for  the  inauguration  of  President  Harrison  in  March. 
This  was  hardly  disseminated,  when  reverse  news  came 
that  the  United  States  Bank  of  Pennsylvania  had  suspended 
specie  payments  which  would  cause  suspension  in  all  states 
southward — a  course  that  was  charged  to  New  York  banks. 
North  Carolina  was  cheered,  however,  by  news  of  Mr. 
Badger's  selection  as  Secretary  of  the  Navy  in  the  Har- 
rison cabinet,  a  Newbern  and  Raleigh  jurist  recognized  as 
one  of  the  greatest  lawyers  in  the  United  States,  and  in  the 
same  class  as  his  fellow  townsman,  Judge  Gaston.  This 
was  a  Morehead  year,  for  besides  a  Governor  Morehead 
and  Senator  Moreland  in  North  Carolina,  Kentucky  sent, 
as  successor  to  Senator  Crittenden,  who  became  Attorney 
General  at  Washington,  a  v/estern  representative  of  the 
family,  Ex-Governor  James  T.  Morehead,  so  that  there  were 


220  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

two  Senators  James  Turner  Morehead,  at  this  time.  But 
it  was  also  a  year  of  blasted  hopes  for  every  Whig  every- 
where, for  on  April  4,  1841,  President  Harrison's  death 
was  announced,  and  President  Tyler's  first  announcement 
of  his  policies  left  one  subject  as  a  source  of  apprehension 
to  every  Whig,  namely,  his  attitude  toward  restoration  of 
the  United  States  Bank  to  regulate  the  currency.  To  test 
that  apprehension,  Henry  Clay,  as  chairman,  reported  a 
bank  bill  and  by  August  6th  it  had  passed  and  been  sent  to 
President  Tyler.  Ten  days  later  the  Whigs  of  America 
received  a  shock  more  vital,  if  possible,  than  the  death  of 
their  late  President,  for  it  w^as  the  announcement  of  the 
political  death  of  President  Tyler  in  his  veto  of  the  Clay 
bank  bill!  The  act  was  softened  slightly,  however,  by  his 
signature  of  the  repeal  of  the  Sub-Treasury  bill  but  he 
again  irritated  them  by  vetoing  a  somewhat  similar  bill  for 
a  "Fiscal  Corporation"  on  September  9th,  when  they  knew 
they  had  no  longer  a  Whig  President,  and  began  to  suspect 
him  of  creating  a  "third  party."  Then  came  the  resig- 
nations of  his  Whig  cabinet,  except  Secretary  of  State 
Webster,  and  formal  Whig  denunciation  of  Tyler  as  their 
President.  The  next  logical  step  was  for  a  sentiment  to 
spring  up  for  Henry  Clay  as  the  next  Whig  leader,  because 
of  his  bank  bill  to  cure  the  financial  ills  from  which  the 
country  had  suffered  so  long. 

While  these  events  were  in  progress  in  April,  Governor 
IMorehead  was  at  Greensboro  arranging  the  removal  of  his 
family  to  Raleigh  and  installing  them  in  the  Executive  Man- 
sion at  the  foot  of  Fayetteville  Street,  where  he  had  made 
such  improvement  as  he  was  accustomed  to  have  at  "Bland- 
wood."  And  among  his  improvements  was  an  ice-house, 
which,  because  of  the  want  of  more  serious  issues,  his 
political  opponents  were  to  make  locally  famous !  The 
Governor's  family  now  consisted  of  eighteen-year-old  Miss 
Letitia  Harper  Morehead,  "sweet-sixteen"  Miss  Mary 
Corinna  Morehead,  and  fourteen-year-old  Miss  Ann  Eliza 
(H),  with  a  boy  of  eight,  John  Lindsay  Morehead,  named 
for  the  Governor's  father  and  Mrs.  Morehead's  family,  a 
girl  of  five,  Emma  Victoria  Morehead,  and  the  election-day 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  221 

babe-in-arms,  James  Turner  Morehead,  named  after  the 
Governor's  younger  brother,  Senator  James  T.  Morehead  of 
Greensboro.  The  older  daughters,  of  course,  spent  the 
school  year  at  Edgeworth  Seminary.  The  Executive  Man- 
sion was  placed  in  as  attractive  condition  as  the  Governor 
had  been  accustomed  to  keep  "Blandwood,"  w^hich  was  one 
of  the  notable  residences  of  the  state;  and  his  life  now  was 
spent  at  both  ends  of  Fayetteville  Street.  In  the  Executive 
office  at  the  southwest  corner  of  the  first  floor  of  the  new 
capitol.  Governor  Morehead  had  inherited  from  his  prede- 
cessor a  free  colored  messenger  and  attendant,  Luns ford 
Lane,  who  had  purchased  his  freedom  of  Mrs.  Sherwood 
Haywood  of  Raleigh,  and  who,  after  six  months  with  Gov- 
ernor Morehead,  found  it  necessary  to  leave  the. state  be- 
cause of  general  feeling  against  free  negroes,  and  he 
became  a  well-known  lecturer  in  the  Abolition  agitation  in 
the  north.^  The  Governor  and  his  family  spent  three  weeks 
in  August  at  his  old  home. 

His  first  aggressive  work  was  in  connection  with  the 
reclamation  of  Swamp  lands  in  the  Sound  peninsula. 
Governor  Morehead's  appointment  of  Ex-Governor  Dud- 
ley to  this  service,  although  he  soon  resigned,  led  to  their 
personal  examination  of  those  lands,  and  on  Wednesday, 
June  16,  1841,  the  borough  of  Washington,  Beaufort  county, 
gave  them  a  complimentary  dinner  at  which  Major  Thomas 
H.  Blount  presided.  Among  the  toasts  was  one — "Our  dis- 
tinguished guest,  Governor  Morehead :  He  has  introduced 
into  the  administration  of  the  state,  the  'go  ahead'  principles 
which  have  illustrated  his  private  life."  In  his  response  he 
showed  that  glowing  faith  in  the  possibilities  of  North  Caro- 
lina for  which  he  was  so  well  known,  dwelt  upon  the  im- 
portance of  the  reclaimed  swamp  lands,  credit  for  which  he 
gave  to  his  predecessor  as  a  bold  and  original  conception, 
designed  to  raise  the  common  school  system  through  its 
wealth.-  By  September  the  Governor  was  able  to  advertise 
50,000  acres  of  swamp  lands  on  the  watershed  of  Hyde 
county  between  the  two  sounds,  into  which  two  canals  six 

'  Lunsford  Lane,  by   Rev.   Wm.   G.   Hawkins. 
^  Washington   Whig. 


222  JOHx\  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

miles  long  drained  them.  They  were  to  be  sold  at  auction 
on  the  Pungo  canal  on  November  30th — at  which,  it  may 
be  added,  none  were  sold  because  no  bid  was  equal  to  the 
required  minimum.  His  interest  in  this,  however,  was 
bound  up  in  his  interest  in  the  common  schools,  because  it 
was  the  basis  of  funds  for  that  purpose.  He  therefore  put 
able  men  on  this  board  and  that  on  common  school  funds  as 
well,  and  gave  both  his  personal  attention. 

He  was  at  Chapel  Hill  at  the  University  Commencement 
as  President  of  the  Board  of  which  he  had  been  a  member 
for  over  a  dozen  years  and  during  the  summer  issued,  as 
President  of  the  Literary  (or  Common  School)  Fund,  the 
county  incomes  from  it — a  total  of  $54,608.99,  from  which 
such  counties  as  Orange,  Rutherford,  Guilford  and  a  few 
others  received  largest  amounts.  It  was  this  fund  the  Gov- 
ernor was  trying  to  increase  in  sale  of  reclaimed  swamp 
lands.  It  was  expected  that  the  next  one  would  be  twice 
that  amount.  Indeed  Governor  Morehead's  stimulating 
suggestive  spirit  unconsciously  permeated  every  department 
of  the  state's  thought  and  activity.  He  spent  two  weeks  in 
October  in  Greensboro  and  on  his  return  early  in  November 
attended  a  meeting  of  the  Wilmington  and  Weldon  Rail- 
road, representing  the  state,  and  a  public  dinner  to  Ex-Sec- 
retary of  the  Navy,  Mr.  Badger,  at  Raleigh,  in  which  he 
responded  to  a  toast  to  himself.  About  this  time  the  effect 
on  agriculture  and  commerce  for  about  fifty  miles  each 
side  of  the  new  railroads  was  beginning  to  be  so  noticeable 
that  some  leaders  like  Mr.  Gales  of  the  Raleigh  Register  be- 
gan advocating  a  turnpike  from  Raleigh  to  the  Tennessee 
line.  The  enthusiasm  over  the  growth  of  public  schools 
was  so  great  that  it  was  believed  this  new  era  would  stop 
the  great  emigration  and  produce  immigration  also.  At  the 
Badger  dinner  Governor  Morehead  offered  the  toast: 
"The  physical  and  intellectual  resources  of  North  Carolina. 
Her  citizens  have  long  esteemed  the  one — the  Union  now 
esteems  the  other."  This  was  typical  of  the  new  spirit  in 
the  entire  state. 

Early  in  December  the  Whigs  in  Orange  county  started 
the  ball  rolling  for  the  next  Presidential  and  Gubernatorial 


WHIG  GOVERNOR  AND  FIRST  RAILWAYS  223 

elections,  by  nominating  Henry   Clay   for   President,   and 
Governor  Morehead  to  succeed  himself,  saying:  "That  we 
heartily  and  cordially  approve  of  the  Administration  of  our 
able  and  patriotic  Governor,  John  M.  Morehead."    Early  in 
January,  1842,  soon  after  he  had  presided  at  the  Bank  of 
North  Carolina  board  meeting,  whose  condition  was  excel- 
lent, the  Democratic  Convention  met,  determined  to  take 
advantage    of    the    anomalous    Whig    situation — having    a 
President  who  was  no  President ! — ,  and  nominated  a  Fay- 
etteville  man,  Louis  D.  Henry,  who  might  be  thought  of  as 
so  near  the  eastern  and  western  line  as  to  be  of  both  sections. 
The  contest  against  Governor  Morehead  was  avowedly  be- 
cause he  was  a  Whig.     Late  in  the  same  month  news  came 
of  the  failure  of  the  Girard  Bank,  Philadelphia,  one  of  the 
greatest  in  the  Union — and  every  such  event  was  bound  to 
be  disastrous  to  the  party  in  power.     Governor  McNutt  of 
Mississippi    was    issuing    public    letters    glorying    in    that 
state's  repudiation  of  her  debts.     The  situation  was  so  grave 
that  during  the  previous  summer  various  Governors  were  ad- 
dressed by  a  W.  A.  Kentish  of  London,  asking  their  consid- 
eration of  a  plan  to  make  one  head  state  bank  to  function 
like  the  Bank  of  England,  for  each  state,  and  then  these  to 
cooperate  to  secure  uniformity.     As  a  result  the  Democrats 
were  encouraged  and  the  Whigs  had  a  tremendous  fight  on 
their  hands.     County  Whig  conventions  were  wide  awake 
during  the  winter  and  spring  endorsing  Clay  and  Morehead, 
and  the  Democrats  were,  if  anything,  even  more  active,  the 
Raleigh  Standard  leading  the  attacks  on  the  Governor,  all 
of  them  almost  as  significant  as  the  ice-house  episode  and 
all,    even    though    insignificant,    proven    false.     Candidate 
Henry  began  his  operations  even  as  early  as  March,  1842; 
and  in  desperation  the  Standard  began  to  speak  of  "John 
Moonshine  Morehead." 

On  April  4,  1842,  the  anniversary  of  the  death  of  Presi- 
dent Harrison,  the  Whigs  held  their  State  Convention  in  the 
Hall  of  the  House  of  Commons,  Raleigh ;  and  the  Register, 
of  that  city,  said  "It  was  the  largest  and  most  imposing 
political  assembly  ever  convened  in  North  Carolina  with  the 
exception  of  the  mass  convention  of  1840."    It  avowed  itself 


224  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

for  Clay  for  President  and  Morehead  for  Governor,  the 
"whole  official  conduct"  of  the  latter  meeting  their  "hearty 
approval"  and  "his  integrity,  intelligence,  impartiality,  dili- 
gence and  economy  in  administering  the  offices  of  the  State" 
winning  their  desires  "with  one  heart  and  one  voice"  that  he 
be  re-elected.  While  admitting  that  a  canvass  by  a  Gover- 
nor for  re-election  was  not  ordinarily  advisable,  they  thought 
the  needs  of  the  present  in  public  affairs  so  important  that 
his  opponent  ought  not  to  be  allowed  to  preempt  the  field 
and  thought  Governor  Morehead  ought,  in  this  instance,  to 
make  a  canvass.  Governor  Morehead  was  called  from  his 
office  on  the  first  floor  to  the  Hall  of  the  Commons  on  the 
second. 


Mrs.    John    Motlev    jMorehead 
I'roni   a   portrait  liy   William    (iarl    Broune,    1855 


XI 

A 

Whig  Leader  and  Governor 

AND 

The  First  Railways 
(Continued) 

1842 

In  response  to  his  re-nomination  Governor  Morehead 
said :  "Mr.  President — I  should  be  wanting  in  candor  to 
myself,  were  I  to  say  that  the  Resolution  just  read  is  un- 
expected to  me.  I  could  not  feel,  Sir,  that  I  was  an  indiffer- 
ent spectator  to  the  proceedings  of  my  fellow-citizens 
throughout  the  State  in  the  numerous  primary  meetings 
which  have  been  held  for  the  purpose  of  appointing  Dele- 
gates to  this  Convention.  But  a  few  short  weeks  have 
passed,  since  our  opponents  held  a  similar  meeting  in  this 
place,  and  I  was  denounced  as  having  done  nothing  to 
meet  the  approbation  of  the  people.  And,  I  did  therefore 
look,  Sir,  with  interest  and  anxiety,  to  see  what  verdict  the 
great  body  of  my  fellow  citizens  would  pass  upon  me.  At 
every  meeting,  Sir,  since  held,  my  conduct  as  Executive  of 
the  State  has  been  cordially  approved,  and  the  judgment  of 
these  meetings,  I  am  proud  to  perceive  from  the  Resolution 
just  read,  is  endorsed  by  this  highly  respectable  body. 

"When,  Sir,  I  entered  upon  the  duties  of  my  Office,  as 
Governor  of  North  Carolina,  it  was  with  a  determination  to 
deserve  the  confidence  of  the  whole  people;  and  so  far,  as 
I  had  the  ability  to  do  so,  my  conduct  has  been  rigidly 
shaped  to  produce  that  result.  From  that  desk,  Sir  (point- 
ing to  the  president's  seat),  when  I  took  the  oath  of  office, 
I  declared  my  intention  to  be  the  Governor  of  the  State,  of 

225 


226  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the  Whole  State,  and  not  of  a  Party;  and  I  have  not  only 
endeavored  to  act  up  to  that  declaration,  but  think  I  have 
done  so.  And,  notwithstanding  the  harshness  with  which  I 
have  been  denounced,  I  am  still  resolved  to  be  the  Governor 
of  the  State,  and  not  of  a  Party.  It  is  true,  that  the  posi- 
tion, in  which  I  am  now  placed,  may  compel  me,  of  neces- 
sity, to  mingle  in  the  party  politics  of  the  day — I  cannot 
be  the  candidate  of  a  party,  and  not  show  some  party 
feeling — but  such  feelings  shall  never  enter  into  the  dis- 
charge of  my  official  duties. 

"It  would,  Mr.  President,  be  extremely  gratifying  to  me, 
if  canvassing  the  State  could  be  dispensed  with,  and  I  am 
pleased  to  find  that  the  Convention  deprecate  in  their  Reso- 
lution, as  a  general  rule,  the  example  of  an  incumbent  of 
the  Executive  Chair  conducting  the  canvass  in  person. 
But,  Sir,  I  am  also  gratified  to  perceive,  by  the  terms  of  the 
Resolution,  that  while  the  example  is  deprecated,  the 
Whig  party  have  no  idea  of  chaining  down  their  candidate, 
while  hosts  of  writers,  belonging  to  the  opposition,  are 
poisoning  the  public  mind,  and  even  their  Candidate  is 
traversing  the  State,  engaged  in  the  same  work.  The 
people  of  Old  North  Carolina  go  for  fair  play.  Sir; 
they  will  never  consent,  that  in  a  contest  of  this  kind,  one 
man  shall  hold  my  feet,  another  my  hands,  and  a  third  stand 
by  gouging  all  the  time !  No,  Sir ;  but  when  such  foul  play 
is  shown,  they  will  come  to  the  rescue. 

"Sir,  after  the  manifestations  of  confidence  which  I  have 
received  at  the  hands  of  the  Whigs,  as  well  as  in  primary 
meetings,  as  from  this  Convention,  I  should  not  deserve 
the  name  of  a  true  Whig,  if  I  did  not  cheerfully  accept 
the  nomination.  When,  in  1840,  the  banner  was  committed 
to  my  hands,  bearing  the  glorious  name  of  Harrison,  and 
those  of  Tyler  and  Morehead,  and  when.  Sir,  was  run  up 
the  last  gaff,  I  took  especial  care  it  should  never  be  lowered 
until  victory  had  crowned  our  efforts.  But,  Sir,  a  shadow 
has  passed  over  the  flag  of  our  prosperity,  and  the  most 
brilliant  name  on  it  has  been  erased.  In  its  place  is  left 
the  shadow  of  Abstraction — I  should  rather  say  of  distrac- 
tion; but  if  my  own  humble  name  be  the  only  one  which 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTLXUED  227 

shall  be  emblazoned  on  its  folds  hereafter,  I  will  again  bear 
it  aloft  in  triumph  from  ocean  wave  to  mountain  top.  No 
man  deserves  the  name  of  Whig,  who  suffers  himself  to 
despond.  Though  death  has  stricken  down  our  glorious 
old  Chief,  and  his  substitute  has  deserted  our  colors,  we 
should  never  despair.  Our  Revolutionary  fathers  waged 
a  seven-years'  war  to  accomplish  American  Independence, 
and  they  would  have  fought  seven  times  seven  years,  be- 
fore they  would  have  given  up  the  Ship.  And  shall  we, 
their  degenerate  sons,  feel  that  the  measure  of  our  glory 
is  full,  because  we  are  called  on  to  labor  two  short  cam- 
paigns? If,  Sir,  there  is  to  be  found  such  a  thing  as  a 
tvavcring  Whig  (though  I  have  never  seen  or  heard  of  one), 
I    would   address    him    in    the    language    of    Bruce    to    his 

Soldiers — 

"Wha  can  be  a  traitor  knave? 
Wha  can  fill  a  coward's  grave? 
Wha  so  base  as  be  a  slave? 

Traitor  !  Coward  !  turn  and  flee. 

"Sir,  there  is  no  mistake  about  North  Carolina,  or  her 
political  position.  I  predicted  the  success  of  the  Whigs 
in  1840,  and  I  predict  a  still  more  brilliant  victory  in  1842. 
I  was  no  false  Prophet  then — I  shall  not,  I  am  confident, 
prove  one  now.  We  have  resolved  again  to  deliver  our 
country ;  but  if,  by  any  possibility,  we  fail,  then  we  shall 
have  only  ourselves  to  blame.  We  have  a  decided  majority 
in  the  State,  and  our  good  old  mother  expects  every  Whig 
to  do  his  duty !'" 

As  the  Convention  closed  General  Alfred  Dockery,  the 
President,  said  this  presidency  of  a  convention  that  nomi- 
nated Henry  Clay  for  the  national  executive  and  John 
M.  Morehead  for  that  of  the  state  was  the  greatest  legacy 
he  could  leave  to  his  children.  In  the  evening  the  Governor 
gave  a  reception  to  the  Convention  members  and  to  leading 
citizens.  He  at  once  began  to  form  his  itinerary :  May  3rd, 
at  Greenville;  May  10th,  at  Snow  Hill;  16th,  at  Waynes- 
boro; 18th,  at  Halifax;  19th,  at  Jackson;  24th,  at  Smith- 

^  Raleigh  Register,    19th  April,   1842. 


228  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

field ;  27th,  at  Hillsboro ;  and  Fayetteville  on  June  7th.  On 
May  17th  The  Register  said  in  predicting  a  brilliant  victory 
in  August:  "All  eyes  are  now  turned  on  North  Carolina; 
and  the  Whigs  throughout  the  Union  regard  her  as  the 
Gibraltar  of  sound  principles,  and  as  again  destined  to  stop 
in  its  mad  career  the  ball  of  Loco  Focoism."  This  was 
reinforced  by  the  election  of  a  North  Carolinian,  Senator 
Mangum,  as  President  of  the  National  Senate.  Governor 
Morehead's  speaking  at  Hillsboro  brought  him  near  the 
University,  where  he  again  performed  his  duties  as  Presi- 
dent of  its  governing  board. 

The  most  notable  debate  of  the  whole  gubernatorial 
campaign  of  1842,  was  when  Governor  Morehead  went  di- 
rectly into  the  enemies'  camp,  Fayetteville,  the  home  of  his 
rival,  Louis  D.  Henry.  "We  have  just  witnessed  the  great- 
est intellectual  contest  that  has  ever  occurred  in  North 
Carolina,"  says  the  Fayetteville  Observer.  "The  candidates 
for  the  office  of  Governor  have  been  engaged  for  ten  hours 
and  thirty-five  minutes,  without  any  intermission,  in  a  most 
animated  discussion  of  all  those  points  of  national  and  state 
politics  which  divide  the  two  great  parties  whose  repre- 
sentatives they  are.  Commencing  at  eleven  o'clock  A.M. 
Mr.  Morehead  spoke  for  two  hours,  when,  agreeably  to 
arrangement,  he  gave  way  to  Mr.  Henry,  who  spoke  for 
three  hours  and  ten  minutes  (the  last  hour  and  ten  min- 
utes by  the  courtesy  of  Mr.  Morehead  and  his  friends,  the 
agreement  having  been  that  each  should  speak  but  two 
hours  at  a  time).  Mr.  Morehead  rejoined  for  two  hours 
and  forty  minutes,  Mr.  Henry  two  hours  more,  and  Gov- 
ernor Morehead  forty-live  minutes ; — closing  the  debate  at 
35  minutes  past  9  o'clock  at  night — Air.  Morehead  having 
occupied  5  hours  and  25  minutes  and  Mr.  Henry  5  hours  and 
10  minutes. 

"There  were  hundreds  of  persons  present,  many  of 
whom  never  left  the  ground  to  get  a  mouthful  to  eat  during 
the  whole  of  the  protracted  period ;  many  of  whom  stood  for 
hours  together  in  one  spot ;  and  many  of  whom  closed  their 
stores  and  workshops,  so  that  there  was  a  general  sus- 
pension of  business.     A  number  of  gentlemen  were  here 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  229 

from  Robeson,  Moore,  Richmond,  Bladen  and  Sampson 
counties,  whose  chief  business  in  town  was  to  witness  this 
first  meeting  of  the  riv^al  candidates. 

"And  what  a  glorious  meeting  it  has  been  for  the  Whigs ! 
Never  party  had  a  more  honest,  a  more  gallant,  a  more 
able,  or  eloquent  leader  than  John  M.  Morehead !  And  never 
leader  had  more  unequivocal  marks  of  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  he  inspired  his  auditory.  He  received  the  warm  con- 
gratulations of  a  large  number  of  his  friends,  who  accom- 
panied him  to  his  lodgings,  at  the  victory,  which  their  joy- 
ful faces,  not  less  than  the  woe-begone  countenances  of  a 
few  of  his  opponents  who  were  to  be  seen,  so  plainly  told 
him  that  he  had  gained.  It  was  indeed  a  victory ;  a  vic- 
tory not  won  without  a  struggle,  a  powerful  struggle,  main- 
tained with  all  the  ardor,  all  the  eloquence,  all  the  tact,  all 
the  art,  for  which  his  adversary  has  gained  no  little  repu- 
tation. The  collision  was  conducted  with  fairness  on  both 
sides,  as  well  by  the  candidates  as  by  the  people ;  for  which 
all  parties  deserve  great  credit. 

"It  is  not  possible  that  we  should  give  our  readers  any 
more  than  the  outline  of  the  debate.  The  Governor  com- 
menced by  defending  himself  from  the  various  charges 
which  have  been  made  against  him,  as  well  by  his  opponent 
as  by  the  press.  The  charges  of  his  having  proscribed 
public  officers  for  opinion's  sake  he  met  fully  and  satis- 
torily.  So  far  from  proscribing  any  such  persons,  he  had 
re-appointed  Democrats  to  office  whenever  he  had  found 
them  in  office.  The  two  Democrats  to  one  Whig,  whom 
he  found  in  the  Literary  Board,  he  re-appointed.  One  of 
them  decHned  to  accept,  because  of  his  private  business. 
The  other  did  accept,  and  held  the  place  till  he  was  about  to 
remove  to  Baltimore,  when  he  resigned.  He  filled  the 
vacancies  with  the  most  proper  persons  he  could  find  (ex- 
Governor  Dudley  and  Mr.  Gales) — gentlemen  who  could 
advise  with  him  usefully  in  regard  to  the  duties  of  the 
Board.  Neither  had  he  proscribed  the  Democrat  who  be- 
longed to  the  Improvement  Board — he  had  re-appointed 
him  also.  He  had  been  bitterly  assailed  by  Mr.  Henry 
and  his  party  organs  for  proscribing  for  opinion's  sake,  a 


230  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Democrat  from  the  little  office  of  keeper  of  the  public 
buildings  at  Raleigh.  He  showed  in  reply  to  this  charge, 
that  there  was  no  such  officer  known  to  the  law  till  the  last 
act  of  the  Legislature,  under  which  he  made  the  first  ap- 
pointment ;  consequently,  that  there  could  be  no  proscrip- 
tion from  an  office  which  had  no  existence.  That,  more- 
over, the  'proscribed'  man  who  had  possession  of  the  Keys, 
before  the  office  was  created,  was  intemperate ;  and  above 
all,  the  Governor  was  informed  that  he  was  a  Whig! — and 
had  voted  the  Whig  ticket.  So  that  in  no  particular  was 
the  charge  true. 

"He  stated  fully  his  disposition  of  the  money  appropri- 
ated by  the  last  Legislature  for  furniture  and  repairs  of 
the  Governor's  house.  How  he  had  to  expend  some  of  his 
own  money  to  complete  the  furnishings  of  the  house;  how 
he  had  used  but  $1200  of  the  $3000  which  a  committee  of  the 
Legislature,  with  a  Democratic  member  from  this  county 
at  its  head,  had  reported  as  necessary  to  repair  the  house, 
fences,  etc. ;  how  he  had  expended  the  enormous  sum  of 
$75  to  build  an  ice-house  on  the  lot !  (His  own  ice-house  at 
home  had  cost  him  twice  as  much.) 

"Having  disposed  of  these  and  other  equally  important 
charges  with  which  he  had  been  assailed,  he  passed  to  an  ex- 
amination of  Mr.  Henry's  letter  of  Acceptance,  and  of  his 
political  tergiversations,  at  the  close  of  which  he  read  from 
the  letter  a  passage  declaiming  most  strenuously  on  the  im- 
propriety of  tarnishing  the  public  credit,  and  the  duty  of 
every  man  to  maintain  that  credit  at  all  hazards.  As  a  fit 
commentary  on  these  fine  sentiments — on  paper — the  Gov- 
ernor stated  that  he  was  informed,  and  gave  Mr.  Henry 
the  name  of  his  informant,  that  at  the  close  of  his  service 
in  the  fat  office  which  Gen.  Jackson  bestowed  on  him,  he, 
Mr.  Henry,  had  had  the  Government  draft  for  his  pay 
protested — the  credit  of  his  own  friends  and  favorite  ad- 
ministration tarnished — and  for  what  ?  Why,  -that  he  might 
thus  make  his  draft  receivable  for  public  dues  at  New  York, 
sell  the  exchange  on  New  York  thus  created  at  a  premium, 
and  thereby  add  to  his  salary  of  $3500  a  year,  the  additional 
sum  of  one  or  two  or  300  dollars !     So  much  for  Mr.  Hen- 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  231 

ry's  patriotic  regard  (on  paper)  for  the  public  credit!  Mr. 
Henry  entered  into  a  long  explanation  which  amounted  to 
an  admission  of  the  fact,  justifying  it  on  the  ground  that 
he  was  entitled  to  good  money  (hard  money)  for  his  pay, 
and  as  well  as  we  could  hear,  stating  that  as  far  as  he  could 
recollect  he  had  only  made  about  $30  by  the  operation.  Such 
is  the  measure  of  his  patriotism!  Weighed  against  $30, 
the  public  credit,  the  credit  of  his  own  friends,  by  whom  he 
had  been  most  liberally  rewarded,  kicks  the  beam! 

"In  his  reply,  and  indeed  throughout  both  his  long 
speeches,  the  burden  of  Mr.  Henry's  song  was,  the  glory 
of  Gen.  Jackson's  services,  and  a  denunciation  of  Banks  of 
all  sorts,  State  and  National.  He  lugged  in  Gen.  Jackson 
on  all  occasions.  Never  did  little  Van  hang  on  to  the  Gen- 
eral's tail  with  firmer  grasp  than  Mr.  Henry!  He  had 
never  differed  from  Gen.  Jackson  on  but  one  point,  and 
that  was  upon  the  Deposit  Act  (an  act  under  which 
North  Carolina  has  received  upwards  of  fourteen  hundred 
thousand  dollars).  He  blamed  the  General  for  that  act. 
But  everybody  knows  that  the  General  made  a  merit  of  ne- 
cessity in  that  case.  He  saw  that  an  overwhelming  ma- 
jority of  Congress  would  pass  it  in  spite  of  his  veto. 

"But  the  Banks,  Mr.  Henry  said,  were  corrupt;  they 
were  'manufactories  of  rogues  and  swindlers ;'  they  were 
rotten ;  political  machines ;  lending  their  money  to  effect 
political  ends;  he  himself  had  'fallen  among  thieves'  in 
having  anything  to  do  with  them.  Most  effectually  did 
Governor  Morehead  turn  these  charges  against  their  maker. 
He  said  that  for  his  part  he  didn't  know  much  about  Banks ; 
he  had  but  little  to  do  with  them.  But  Mr.  Henry  seemed 
to  him  to  be  very  fond  of  the  company  of  these  'thieves, 
rogues  and  szvindlers/  for  after  having  been  a  stock  holder 
in  the  old  State  and  Newbern  Banks ;  after  having  served 
as  a  Director  and  Attorney  in  one  of  these  for  many  years, 
he  goes  right  oft"  in  1834,  when  the  new  Bank  of  the  State 
was  chartered,  and  subscribes  for  some  thirty  shares  of  its 
stock,  and  again  consents  to  become  a  partner  with  these 
'thieves,'  to  become  Attorney  for  this  'manufactory  of 
rogues  and  swindlers,'  and  to  participate  in  the  profits  of  its 


232  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

'roguei*}'.'  [This  was  a  deserved  rebuke  for  such  vilely  false 
charges  against  the  Banks.  We  say  vilely  false;  for  it  is  an 
imputation  upon  those  who  are  directors  of  the  Banks,  and, 
as  one,  we  repel  the  imputation.  Whether  true  of  himself, 
when  he  was  a  director,  we  know  not,  nor  care  not.  We 
have  served  in  that  capacity  with  an  honorable  man  of  Mr. 
Henry's  own  party,  and  we  are  willing  that  he  should  say 
whether  he  believes  or  knows  that  political  feeling  ever 
influenced  the  conduct  of  himself  or  his  associates.] 

"The  Governor  extorted  from  Mr.  Henry  the  admission 
that  he  was  in  favor  of  the  U.  S.  Bank  up  to  the  veto  Mes- 
sage in  July,  1832.  He  then  asked  him  how  he  could  be 
favorable  to  it,  if  it  had  done  all  the  mischief  that  he  had 
attributed  to  it  in  1819-20,  1828-29,  etc.,  and  had  never 
regulated  the  currency  nor  done  any  other  good  thing? 
Air.  Henry  replied  that  he  did  not  know  of  these  things 
till  after  the  veto.  What!  not  know  of  the  Bank's  evil  and 
corrupt  conduct,  when  one  of  its  branches  was  located  at 
his  own  door?  No,  he  knew  nothing  of  them.  Well,  you 
surely  knew,  asked  the  Governor,  that  it  was  breaking  down 
the  North  Carolina  local  banks  in  1827-28,  as  you  say  in 
your  letter?  Y-e-s,  he  did  know  that.  How,  then,  de- 
manded the  Governor,  could  you  favor  the  re-charter  of  the 
Bank  which  was  carrying  ruin  in  its  course  through  the 
State?     This  was  a  poser. 

"On  the  subject  of  public  expenditure,  and  the  relative 
economy  of  the  late  and  present  administrations,  each  of 
the  candidates  had,  of  course,  a  good  deal  to  say.  Our 
readers  may  judge  of  the  result  in  this  particular,  when  we 
inform  them,  that  Mr.  Henry  actually  stated  that  the  present 
administration  had  had,  in  the  space  of  fifteen  months,  not 
less  than  fifty-one  millions,  on  which  to  administer  the  gov- 
ernment! When  Gov.  Morehead  got  him  to  read  his 
bill  of  particulars,  behold,  this  enormous  51  millions  was 
composed  in  part  of  the  loan  of  111  millions,  and  the 
sum  of  five  millions,  which  it  is  estimated  Congress  will  add 
to  the  tariff!  And  these  sums,  not  one  dollar  of  zvhich  has 
come  into  the  treasury,  are  figured  by  Mr.  Henry  as  com- 
posing a  part  of  Whig  expenditures   for  the  last  fifteen 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  233 

months  ! !  The  Governor  did  not  admit  that  this  was  a  Whig 
administration,  but  he  showed  the  humbuggery  of  this  pre- 
posterous statement  of  Mr.  Henry's. 

"On  the  subject  of  Internal  Improvements,  the  Gover- 
nor arraigned  his  competitor.  The  whole  tendency  of  the 
Letter  of  Acceptance  was  to  throw  odium  on  Internal  Im- 
provements, the  'gambling  debts'  of  the  States,  created  for 
the  prosecution  of  wild  schemes  of  Improvement,  etc.  The 
Governor  showed  that  Mr.  Henry  had  gone  as  far  as  the 
farthest,  not  in  investing  his  oivn  money,  but  in  recommend- 
ing the  investment  of  the  people's  money,  and  the  creation 
of  these  'gambling  debts.'  At  one  time  he  was  for  the 
State  borrowing  five  millions,  and  at  another  three  millions, 
and  even  from  British  bankers  (of  whom  he  now  affects 
such  a  horror)  ;  then  he  was  in  favor  of  the  State  taking 
two-fifths  of  the  stock  in  any  works  where  individuals 
would  take  three-fifths,  and  to  crown  all,  he  was  of  opinion 
the  state  ought  to  undertake  certain  great  works  on  her  own 
hook,  with  her  funds  alone,  not  asking  the  people's  aid  at 
all.  Pressing  Mr.  Henry  to  know  what  he  was  now  in 
favor  of,  he  procured  from  him  the  avowal,  that  though 
he  had  gained  wisdom  by  experience,  and  was  not  in  favor 
of  the  five  million  loan,  yet  he  was  still  in  favor  of,  and 
would  stand  or  fall  by  the  recommendations  of  the 
Raleigh  Convention  of  December,  1838.  The  principal 
recommendation  of  that  body,  which  he  thus  adheres  to, 
was  that  the  State  should  borrow  three  millions  of  dollars 
to  invest  in  works  of  Internal  Improvement.  At  a  moment 
of  greater  leisure,  we  propose  to  look  into  this  matter,  and 
let  our  readers  see  what  a  magnificent  system  of  'gambling 
debts'  Mr.  Henry  is  now  in  favor  of,  after  all  his  denunci- 
ations of  Whig  madness  on  the  subject. 

"Mr.  Henry,  in  turn,  demanded  to  know  of  the  Gover- 
nor, whether  he  was  not  indebted  to  the  Banks,  as  had  been 
charged  and  not  denied;  arguing  that  if  he  was,  his  judg- 
ment in  regard  to  those  institutions  might  be  biased  by  his 
interest.  The  Governor's  reply  carried  consternation  to 
his  catechist  and  his  party.  He  did  not  owe  any  Bank  one 
dollar,  so  far  as  he  knew.     He  was  not  a  borrower  from 


234  JOHX  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

them.  His  only  dealings  with  them  were  to  sell  them  his 
bills  of  exchange  when  he  had  such  in  the  course  of  his 
business.  It  was  possible  that  one  such  draft,  accepted  by 
him,  had  been  discounted  by  some  bank,  but  if  it  was,  it  w-as 
not  done  for  his  accommodation,  but  for  that  of  the  holder 
of  the  draft. 

"He  asked  Mr.  Henry,  since  he  had  answered  this  ques- 
tion, to  inform  him  how  he  had  invested  the  wealth  of  which 

he  was  the  reputed  possessor.     Mr.  H replied  that  he 

had  some  real  estate,  some  negroes,  some  12  or  $15,(X)0  of 
Ohio  State  Stocks,  some  Louisiana  Bank  Stock,  some 
Raleigh  and  Gaston  Railroad  bonds,  guaranteed  by  the 
State,  some  Cape  Fear  and  Bank  of  the  State  Stocks,  but 
the  chief  part  of  his  means  was  loaned  out  on  bonds  in  the 
counties  of  Franklin,  Warren,  Cumberland,  Sampson,  etc., 
etc.  The  Governor  thereupon  closed  the  discussion  wath  a 
most  eloquent  description  of  the  effects  of  breaking  down 
the  Banks  and  resorting  to  a  hard  money  currency,  which 
seemed  to  be  the  result  aimed  at  by  Mr.  Henry  and  his 
party.  They  had  created  the  Banks,  and  the  people  had 
gone  in  debt  for  property  purchased  at  high  prices.  Strike 
down  the  Banks,  and  the  creditors  would  swallow  up  all  the 
means  of  the  debtors.  A  debtor  would  have  to  give  100 
days'  labor  to  pay  for  a  cow  that  he  could  have  paid  for  in 
ten  days  when  he  bought  her.  100  bushels  of  wheat  would 
realize  the  farmer  no  more  hard  money  than  10  bushels 
under  the  paper  money  system.  It  behooved  the  debtor 
portion  of  the  community  to  look  well  into  these  matters. 
They  would  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  money  lenders — such 
men  as  Mr.  Henry.  For  his  own  part,  all  that  he  had  (and 
he  had  made  it  all  by  the  strong  arm,  the  stout  heart,  and 
what  little  of  intellect  Providence  had  blessed  him  with) 
was  invested  in  the  industrial  pursuits  within  the  good  old 
State  of  North  Carolina.  He  neither  sent  it  out  of  the 
State  for  investment,  nor  loaned  it  at  interest.  He  had 
invested  it  in  manufacturing,  mechanical  and  farming 
operations,  by  which  he  afforded  employment  to  many  of 
his  poor  neighbors,  mechanics,  etc. 

"This  is  a  hasty,  a  very  imperfect  outline,  from  memory. 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  235 

of  the  sayings  of  this  most  interesting  day.  It  is  written  be- 
tween midnight  and  morning,  under  feelings  of  the  strongest 
elation,  it  is  true,  at  the  triumph  of  our  cause,  and  its  able 
advocate ;  but,  as  far  as  it  goes,  we  have  endeavored  to  make 
it  fair.  We  only  regret  that  we  have  not  time  to  make  it 
more  full.'" 

In  starting  his  western  tour,  the  Governor  spoke  at 
Greensboro,  as  he  had  not  done  in  1840.  Greensboro,  as  it 
was  in  1842,  has  been  pictured  in  verse  by  the  Principal  of 
Edgeworth  School,  Miss  M.  A.  Hoye,  just  before  her 
death : 

"This  thriving  village,  I  am  told 

Is  but  a  score  and  six  years  old. 

It  sprung  as  if  by  magic  stroke 

Amid  the  shade  of  pine  and  oak: 

For  here  it  may  be  plainly  seen 

By  trees  of  light  and  darker  green 

That  there  is  a  dividing  line — 

One  side  is  oak,  the  other  pine" 

and  boys  were  boys  and  girls  were  girls  then  as  now,  for 
she  says : 

"The  Edgeworth  roof  attracts  my  eye; 
I  fain  would  pass  this  building  by, 
For  it  may  seem  against  good  rule 
To  mention  first  of  all  my  school; 
But  what  comes  first  we  all  agree 
Must  first  be  served.    What's  this  I  see? 
The  gateway  open,  I  declare, 
And  gate  unhinged,  and  gone — gone  where? 
Ah,  that's  the  secret — 'tis  fine  fun 
To  steal  a  gate  at  night  and  run 
And  hide  it  in  some  secret  place : 
The  genus  of  greatness  I  can  trace 
In  minds  so  eminently  wise 
That  can  such  wond'rous  schemes  devise 
And  execute  so  valiantly ! 

^Raleigh  Register,  14th  June,  1842.  This  reference  to  educational  insti- 
tutions in  Greensboro  serves  to  recall  the  fact  that  Virginia,  North  Carolina  and 
South  Carolina  had,  at  this  time,  the  fewest  persons  who  could  read  of  all  the 
states  of  the  Union;  and  that  they  had  the  smallest  number  of  newspapers  to  white 
population.  North  Carolina  having  far  the  fewest  of  the  three,  with  only  one 
to  17,500  white  people,  Virginia  coming  next  with  14,125,  and  Kentucky  and 
South  Carolina  following,  in  that  order.  North  Carolina  had  no  daily,  and  but 
one  semi-weekly,  althouh  it  had  26  weeklies,  and  two  periodicals.  In  weeklies, 
only  Virginia,  Tennessee  and  Mississippi  surpassed  her  and  the  last  Ijy  only 
one. 


236  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Why  they  in  very  troth  will  soon 

Equal,  if  not  superior,  be 
To  cunning  fox  or  sly  raccoon 
Which  love  at  midnight  hour  to  stray 
Upon  their  predatory  v^ay!" 

And  doubtless  there  is  a  case  of  consequences  and  cause 
in  the  juxtaposition  of  the  following: 

"Hark!     With  the  music  of  my  strings 
A  distant  bell  in  concert  rings. 
It  is  the  Caldwell  bell,  it  calls 
The  students  to  its  classic  halls : 
It  is  the  hour  for  evening  prayer, 
A  hundred  noble  youths  meet  there 
With  holy  shepherds  there  they  meet 
To  worship  at  Jehovah's  feet. 
Are  they  not  safer,  far,  the  flock 
Whose  guides  are  faithful,  wise  and  good?" 

She  also  "sings"  the  two  other  schools,  the  factory,  and 
mill,  newspaper,  the  Guards  and  all  the  rest  that  made  up 
"happy  Greensboro.'" 

About  1805-7  there  was  an  agitation  to  remove  the  court 
house  from  "battle-scarred  Martinsville"  to  the  "Center" 
of  Guilford  county  and  the  two  parties  took  these  names. 
The  party  of  the  first  part  shrewdly  secured  the  decision  of 
the  County  Court  to  put  up  a  new  building,  presumably  at 
their  town;  but  this  only  put  the  "Center"  people  on  their 
mettle  and  they  won.  Forty-two  acres  were  secured  and 
the  town  plan  named  after  the  famous  Revolutionary  hero. 
General  Nathaniel  Greene.  The  deed  is  dated  March  25, 
1808.  Among  forty-six  lots  all  but  two  were  taken  and 
among  owners  one  notes  the  name  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  David 
Caldwell,  the  famous  teacher  and  divine. - 

Greensboro  met  the  Governor  with  a  demonstration 
on  Friday,  24th  of  June,  1842,  a  mounted  company  greeted 
him  over  a  mile  out  of  town,  and  their  spokesman,  among 
other  remarks,  said :  "We  welcome  you  as  the  champion 
of  Whig  principles,  who  bore  the  Whig  flag  triumphantly 

1  The  Patriot,  6th  Sept.,  1845. 
^Ibid.,  16th  May,  1846. 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED         237 

from  the  ocean  wave  to  mountain  tops  and  crowned  it  with 
glorious  victory  in  1840,  and  who,  we  believe,  at  the  sacrifice 
of  your  own  ease  and  domestic  comfort  will  bear  it  again  to 
victory  in  1842."  The  Governor  responded  with  deep 
emotion  and  the  procession  passed  on  up  to  the  home  of 
Senator  James  Turner  Morehead,  his  brother,  where  was 
held  a  reception.  The  Masons  were  celebrating  St.  John's 
day  and  he  became  their  guest  and  listened  to  an  address 
at  the  Presbyterian  Church  by  Rev.  Mr.  Kerr.  The  next 
day  a  stage  at  the  side  of  this  church  was  prepared  and  at 
one  o'clock  Governor  Morehead  addressed  a  multitude  for 
about  four  hours.  He  recalled  how,  in  1840,  they  endorsed 
him  with  over  2200  votes,  a  result  that  made  Guilford  looked 
upon  as  the  Gibraltar  of  Whig  principles  in  the  state.  A 
witness  said :  "He  spoke  with  all  the  freedom  and  fearless- 
ness of  one  conscious  of  having  done  his  duty."  He  at- 
tacked Tyler  and  disclaimed  him  as  a  Whig.  He  said  that 
this  period  under  Tyler  were  not  "'Whig  times,"  but  "a  con- 
tinuation of  Democratic  times."  He  closed  with  an  appeal 
and  a  hope  that  "we  should  yet  see  that  greatest  statesman 
of  the  age,  Henry  Clay,  at  the  helm,  when  all  will  be  well."^ 
After  he  left,  on  his  western  tour,  great  news  came  of  his 
progress.  "He  does  not  taunt  nor  insult  his  opponents," 
said  one  account,  "but  addresses  them  as  brothers,  and  in 
such  a  persuasive  manner,  that  makes  his  appeal  almost 
irresistible."  At  Asheville  there  was  a  great  barbecue; 
here  he  followed  Mr.  Henry's  visit,  and  held  undiminished 
attention  for  over  three  hours.  He  discussed  the  banking 
systems  and  advocated  a  National  Bank  and  the  "spider 
web  structure"  of  Mr.  Henry  had  no  show  before  the 
"heavy  battle  axe  of  John  M.  Morehead" — to  quote  one 
enthusiastic  Whig.  He  showed  how  every  President,  while 
President,  from  Washington  down  to  just  before  Van  Buren 
had  admitted  the  constitutionality  of  the  National  Bank,  and 
"Bank  vs.  No  Bank"  was  the  issue.  "The  apostle  of  liberty 
has  visited  us,"  said  another  paper.  "In  good  faith,"  said 
the  Greensboro  Patriot,  "we  say  what  we  believe,  when  we 

1  Greensboro  Patriot,  28th  June,  1842. 


238  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

assert  that  no  other  county  can  produce  his  like."  "None 
but  his  powerful  frame,  animated  with  a  spirit  that  never 
for  an  instant  flags — a  soul  fired  with  the  most  highly  hon- 
orable personal  ambition  and  the  truest  love  of  country, 
could  endure  the  fatigue  of  such  a  canvass.  His  country — 
his  whole  country — calls  for  his  powerful  efforts;  and  the 
best  interests  of  that  country,  to  all  human  appearance,  at 
this  moment  hangs  on  his  success !  .  .  .  Prepare  for 
another  peal  of  Guilford  Thunder,  that  shall  fill  the  ears 
of  all  the  people,  re-echo  from  the  mountains  along  her 
smiling  plains,  until  its  reverberations  shall  mix  with  the 
murmurs  of  her  seas."^ 

The  appointments  in  July  were  as  follows  :  13th,  Ruther- 
fordton;  15th,  Shelby ville;  16th,  Lincolnton;  19th,  Mor- 
ganton;  21st,  Statesville;  22nd,  Mocksville;  23rd,  Salis- 
bury ;  25th,  Reid's  Store ;  26th,  Charlotte ;  27th,  Concord ; 
28th,  Stanly;  29th,  Lawrenceville ;  and  30th,  Flat  Swamp. 
By  the  time  the  Whig  Candidate  reached  Shelbyville,  Mr. 
Henry  had  withdrawn  from  the  canvass,  as  he  said,  on  ac- 
count of  his  health,  no  doubt  having  political  health  some- 
what in  mind.  And  his  instinct  was  sound,  for  with  the 
August  election,  whose  returns  were  about  a  month  in 
arriving  at  official  totals,  it  was  discovered  that  he  was  4592 
votes  behind  the  Governor,  who  received  39,586  votes  and, 
in  so  much,  preserved  the  Whig  character  of  North  Caro- 
lina. In  these  campaigns  he  won  the  sobriquet  "Glorious 
Old  War  Horse." 

Now  attention  can  be  turned  to  a  unique  feature  of 
Governor  Morehead's  first  administration :  He  was  in- 
augurated on  January  1,  1841,  just  as  the  Whig  Assembly 
was  closing  its  session,  not  to  meet  again  during  his  term. 
So  that  during  his  first  term  he  had  no  Whig  legislature ; 
and  at  this  election  of  1842,  that  body  was  carried  by  the 
Democrats,  so  that  for  his  whole  two  terms,  unless  the  elec- 
tion of  1844  should  produce  another  Assembly  of  Whigs,  he 
would  not  have  any  law-making  body  to  cooperate  in  his 
plans.     What  then,  up  to  this  time,  was  the  character  of  his 

1  The  Patriot,  30th  July,  1842. 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  239 

influence  as  a  governor?  First,  it  was  the  asset  of  his  per- 
sonal character  stimulating  every  enterprise  with  which  he 
came  in  contact.  In  September  he  issued  the  common  school 
fund  statement  and  showed  it  to  be  $135,699.05,  as  indicat- 
ing development  along  that  line.  Secondly,  as  Whig  leader 
of  a  naturally  Democratic  state  whose  election  occurred  in 
August,  he  became  a  marked  national  figure  in  a  Whig 
administration.  Thirdly,  his  personal  example,  as  he  said 
at  Fayetteville,  in  investing  all  he  had  "in  the  industrial 
pursuits  within  the  good  old  state  of  North  Carolina,"  in 
"manufacturing,  mechanical  and  farming  operations,"  was 
a  great  object  lesson  in  the  fact  that  the  way  to  develop  was 
to  develop.  Fortunately,  his  liberal,  constitutional  views, 
opposed  alike  to  Abolitionist  and  great  Slave-holders,  and 
his  liberal  attitude  to  the  colored  race,  likewise  gave  him 
a  unique  place  as  a  national  force,  and  in  that  way  gave 
new  prestige  to  North  Carolina  in  national  politics.  It  was 
in  these  respects,  and  not  in  his  great  measures  carried 
through  a  Whig  legislature  that  his  two  terms  as  executive 
were  strong.  When  the  Assembly  met  on  November  21st, 
1842,  however,  with  a  Democratic  majority,  his  message 
to  them  showed  what  would  have  been  done  had  he  had 
one  of  his  own  party  in  either  term,  as  shall  now  appear. 

The  position  of  North  Carolina  as  a  leading  Whig  state, 
the  position  of  Governor  Morehead  as  a  re-elected  Whig 
executive,  and  the  fact  that  it  was  done  by  the  same  people 
who  elected  a  Democratic  Legislature,  made  his  first  mes- 
sage to  that  body  of  more  than  local  significance.  It  is  so 
perfect  an  expression  of  both  Governor  Morehead  and  the 
state,  as  well  as  his  times,  that  it  is  given  in  full : 

"Gentlemen  of  the  Senate  and  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons :  The  periodical  assemblage  of  a  portion  of  the  people, 
selected  for  their  eminent  qualifications,  for  the  important 
trusts  confided  to  them — to  enact  laws  by  which  they,  as 
well  as  their  constituents,  are  to  be  governed — is  an  oc- 
casion interesting  to  the  philanthropist,  cheering  to  the 
friends  of  rational  liberty,  and  an  able  commentary  upon 
the  excellence  of  our  political  institutions. 

"To  that  Department  of  the  Government,  assigned  to 


240  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

superintend  the  due  execution  of  the  laws,  this  assemblage 
should  always  be  acceptable,  as  affording  an  opportunity 
to  show  how  the  duties  of  that  Department  have  been  dis- 
charged— to  point  out  defects  of  the  laws,  which  experi- 
ence has  proven  to  exist — and  to  suggest  such  amendments 
and  enactments  as  the  good  of  the  community  may  require. 

"Such  is  the  interesting  occasion,  fellow  citizens,  which 
brings  us  together;  and,  in  the  name  of  our  common  con- 
stituents, I  cordially  greet  you,  and  tender  you  my  hearty 
cooperation  in  the  adoption  and  execution  of  all  measures 
that  may  redound  to  the  welfare  of  the  community. 

"Since  the  last  meeting  of  your  Honorable  body,  al- 
though portions  of  our  State  have  been  visited  with  afiflic- 
tion,  and  with  physical  causes  destructive  to  the  hopes  and 
labors  of  the  husbandman' — yet  the  general  health  of  the 
land  and  the  bounteous  productions  of  the  soil  have  been 
such  as  to  elicit  the  most  profound  gratitude  towards  that 
Author,  from  whom  all  blessings  flow,  and  to  whose  superin- 
tending Providence  we  are  indebted  for  all  we  are,  and  for 
all  we  hope  to  be.  And  it  is  our  especial  duty,  as  it  is  that 
of  every  Department  of  every  American  Government,  ear- 
nestly to  solicit  a  continuance  of  those  peculiar  favors,  which 
have  rendered  the  American  people  the  blessed  of  the  earth. 

"Within  the  same  period,  an  event  has  taken  place,  in 
the  death  of  our  lamented  Chief  Magistrate,  which,  while 
a  grateful  people  has  mourned  their  bereavement,  and  a 
suffering  country  felt  the  affliction,  yet  has  it  proven  the 
foresight  of  our  Revolutionary  sages,  in  the  adoption  of  our 
Constitution,  and  has  tested  its  wisdom  and  stability.  A 
similar  event,  in  most  other  countries,  would  have  been 
followed  by  a  resort  to  force,  or,  at  least  to  extraordinary 
legislation  to  establish  succession.  With  us,  the  successor, 
already  indicated  by  the  people  themselves,  glides  into  the 
Chief  Magistracy,  with  an  ease  and  quiet  on  his  part,  and 
an  acquiescence  on  ours,  that  proves  how  fortunate  it  is 
for  the  human  family,  when,  in  the  establishment  of  their 
forms  of  Government,  they  select  Wisdom,  instead  of  Am- 

^  Reference  is   to   the  cyclonic   storm   over  the   lower   Roanoke  Valley,   de- 
stroying the  crops  of   that  rich  section. 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— COXTIXUED  241 

bition  for  their  counsellor.  And,  it  is  to  be  fondly  hoped, 
that  every  future  test,  like  this,  will  assure  the  friends 
of  our  form  of  Government,  of  its  strength,  and  its  enemies, 
how  delusive    the  hope  of  its  destruction. 

"The  result  of  the  late  treaty  with  Great  Britain,  gives 
us  pleasing  prospects  of  continued  peace ;  and,  however 
widely  some  of  us  may  differ  from  the  President,  as  to 
the  manner  in  which  he  has  discharged  a  portion  of  his 
duties,  yet  the  meed  of  praise  is  due  to  him,  for  his  earnest 
and  successful  efforts,  sustained  and  carried  through  by  the 
eminent  abilities  of  his  distinguished  Secretary,  to  adjust 
our  difficulties  with  that  Power  upon  principles  of  Honor 
and  of  Justice.  Nor  is  it  to  be  believed,  that  the  good  aris- 
ing from  this  adjustment,  will  be  confined  to  the  parties 
immediately  concerned.'  The  noble  example,  set  by  two 
of  the  most  powerful,  intelligent  and  honorable  nations 
of  the  earth,  in  adjusting  their  difficulties  by  a  resort  to 
argument,  instead  of  arms,  will  be  worthy  the  imitation  of 
every  member  constituting  the  great  family  of  nations. 

"The  history  of  nations  ought  to  have  taught,  and  it  is 
hoped  has  taught  the  present  generation,  that  that  good 
which  arises  from  the  guidance  of  reason  and  the  dictates 
of  justice,  is  more  beneficial  and  permanent,  than  that  which 
results  from  the  most  brilliant  triumph  of  arms,  victorious 
over  right  and  justice. 

"In  inviting  your  attention  to  such  matters  as  ought  to 
engage  your  deliberations  during  your  present  Session,  I 
refer  you  to  the  first  Article  of  our  Constitution,  as  amended, 
whereby  it  becomes  your  duty  at  this  Session,  to  lay  off  the 
State  into  Senatorial  Districts,  and  to  apportion  the  repre- 
sentatives in  the  House  of  Commons  among  the  several 
Counties  of  the  State.  The  rules,  by  which  you  are  to  be 
guided  in  the  discharge  of  your  duties,  are  so  explicitly  laid 
down  in  the  Constitution  itself,  as  to  preclude  all  suggestions 
on  the  subject. 

"At  the  last  Session  of  Congress  an  Act  was  passed  to 
apportion  the  Representatives  among  the  several  States,  ac- 

1  The  Webster-Ashburton  Treaty  defining  the  northwestern  boundary  be- 
tween Canada  arid  the  United  States,  proclaimed  about  ten  days  before. 


242  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

cording  to  the  Sixth  Census.  By  this  Act  the  number  of 
Representatives,  to  which  North  Carolina  is  entitled,  is  re- 
duced from  thirteen  to  nine.  It  therefore  becomes  your  duty 
to  lay  off  the  State  into  nine  Congressional  and  eleven 
Electoral  districts.  In  the  discharge  of  this  duty  justice  to 
the  citizens  of  every  part  of  the  State  demands  that  the  dis- 
tricts shall  be  laid  off  as  nearly  equal  in  Federal  Population 
as  it  is  practicable  to  make  them,  and  that  they  shall  assume 
such  shape  as  shall  be  most  convenient  for  the  voters  and 
candidates  of  every  district.  Indeed,  the  principle,  that  in  all 
popular  elections,  every  citizen  should  have  the  full  political 
w^eight  to  w^hich  he  is  entitled  by  the  Constitutions  and  Laws 
of  the  country,  is  so  obviously  just  and  undeniable,  that  it  is 
deemed  scarcely  necessary  to  suggest  its  adoption  for  your 
guidance  in  the  discharge  of  your  important  duties. 

"By  an  Act  of  Congress,  approved  the  4th  of  September, 
1841,  entitled  'An  Act  to  Appropriate  the  Proceeds  of  the 
Sales  of  the  Public  Lands,  and  to  Grant  Pre-emption  Rights,' 
a  payment  became  due  to  North  Carolina  at  the  public  Treas- 
ury, on  the  1st  of  July  last.  On  the  24th  June  preceding, 
a  communication  from  the  Treasury  Department  was  ad- 
dressed to  this  Department,  requesting  that  an  Agent  should 
be  designated  to  receive  the  payment.  I  forthwith  appointed 
Charles  L.  Hinton,  Esq.,  Public  Treasurer,  the  Agent  of  this 
State,  to  receive  the  payment ;  who  proceeded  to  Washington 
for  that  purpose,  but  the  amount  was  not  then  paid,  for  the 
reason,  as  it  was  alleged,  that  the  net  amount  for  distribution 
had  not  then  been  ascertained.  On  the  4th  November,  the 
Acting  Secretary  of  the  United  States,  informed  me  that  the 
accounts  had  been  adjusted,  and  the  sum  of  $22,917.97  was 
found  due  this  State,  of  which  the  Treasurer  was  informed, 
and  he  forthwith  requested  the  Department  at  Washington 
to  forward  him  a  draft  for  the  amount.  This  draft  is  daily 
expected.  It  becomes  your  duty  to  apply  this  Fund  to  such 
purpose  as  your  wisdom  may  suggest. 

"The  Raleigh  and  Gaston  Railroad  Company  availed 
themselves  of  the  Act  of  the  last  Session,  entitled — 'An  Act 
to  secure  the  State  against  any  and  every  liability  incurred 
for  the  Raleigh  and  Gaston  Railroad  Company,  and   for 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  243 

the  relief  of  the  same,' — by  accepting  the  benefit  of  the  Act, 
and  giving  the  Executive  notice  of  the  acceptance  within 
the  time  therein  prescribed.  The  Deed  of  Mortgage,  and 
Deed  of  Pledge,  required  by  said  Act,  have  been  duly  exe- 
cuted and  registered,  and  Bonds  to  the  amount  of  $500,000, 
conditioned  as  required,  have  been  executed  and  delivered 
to  the  Treasurer,  signed  by  obligors  whom,  I  believed  at  the 
time,  to  be  able  to  pay  and  satisfy  said  Bonds.  The  Treas- 
urer endorsed  $300,000  of  the  Bonds  of  said  Company,  as 
directed  by  the  said  Act  to  do,  and  delivered  them  to  the 
Company;  and  having  therefore,  under  a  former  Act,  en- 
dorsed $500,000,  the  State  stands  responsible  for  the  Com- 
pany, now,  to  the  amount  of  $800,000.  As  yet,  I  am  not 
aware  that  the  Treasurer  has  been  required  to  pay  anything 
for  any  responsibility  incurred  by  the  State  for  this  corpo- 
ration. 

"At  the  same  Session,  an  Act  somewhat  similar,  entitled 
'An  Act  for  the  Relief  of  the  Wilmington  and  Raleigh 
Railroad  Company,'  was  passed.  That  Company  availed 
itself  of  the  benefit  of  the  Act,  by  fully  complying  with  its 
requirements,  in  giving  the  security,  and  their  Bonds,  to  the 
amount  of  $300,000,  have  been  endorsed  by  the  Treasurer, 
as  by  said  Act  he  was  directed  to  do.  I  am  not  aware  that 
any  demand  has  been  made  upon  the  Treasury,  for  any 
liability  incurred  for  this  Company ;  and  I  am  informed  that 
the  Company  has  discharged  $50,000  of  said  Bonds,  as 
required  by  the  Act.  Besides  the  interest,  which  the  State 
should  feel,  from  pride  and  utility,  in  the  success  of  these 
two  noble  enterprises,  there  is  an  additional  interest,  which 
invites  your  serious  attention.  For  the  first  of  these  Roads, 
we  have  seen  that  the  State  is  bound  as  security  for  $800,000 
— for  the  latter,  she  is  bound  as  security  now  for  $250,000, 
besides  being  a  stock-holder  in  the  same  to  the  amount  of 
$600,000.  The  first,  and  most  important  consideration  then, 
is — How  the  Roads  can  be  enabled  to  meet  their  liabilities, 
and  thereby  secure  the  State.  The  embarrassment  of  the 
country  has  been,  for  some  time  past,  and  is  likely  to  be  for 
some  time  to  come,  so  extraordinary,  that  travel,  the  most 
profitable  source  of   revenue  to  Railroads,  has  decreased 


244  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

exceedingly,  and  the  productions  of  industry  are  so  low, 
and  the  profits  of  merchandise  so  reduced,  that  the  income 
from  heavy  transportation  has  greatly  diminished.  No 
doubt  is  entertained  but  that  both  Roads  would  speedily 
extricate  themselves  from  debt,  and  make  their  stock 
profitable,  could  they  have  full  employment.  Any  Act  of 
legislation  that  can  aid  them,  in  procuring  additional  em- 
ployment, without  incurring  additional  responsibility  on  the 
part  of  the  State,  will  certainly  be  wise  and  prudent. 

"It  is  more  than  probable  that  application  will  be  made 
to  charter  a  Company  to  construct  a  Railroad  from  some 
point  on  the  Raleigh  and  Gaston  Railroad,  to  Weldon,  the 
point  where  the  Portsmouth  and  Roanoke  and  Wilmington 
and  Raleigh  Railroads  meet ;  thus  connecting,  by  a  con- 
tinuous Railroad,  our  seat  of  Government  with  our  own 
excellent  Port  of  Wilmington,  on  the  one  hand,  and  with 
one  of  the  best  sea-ports  in  the  world  on  the  other.  No 
valid  objection  to  granting  this  charter  is  perceived,  while 
there  is  much  to  sustain  its  propriety  The  distance  is  short, 
some  fifteen  miles,  the  ground  is  favorable,  and  the  usual 
expense  of  Depots  and  Cars  can  be  dispensed  with,  by  the 
use  of  those  belonging  to  the  Roads  so  greatly  interested  in 
this  connection.  Besides  the  advantage  of  transferring 
heavy  articles  and  such  as  are  inconvenient  to  handle,  di- 
rectly from  the  Vessels  to  the  Cars,  that  will  deliver  them  in 
Raleigh,  and  vice  versa,  it  will  cheapen  and  quicken  trans- 
portation, by  competition,  shorten  the  route  by  Railroad  to 
Wilmington,  and  give  us  the  means  of  offering  our  products 
in  the  rival  markets  of  Petersburg,  Norfolk  and  Wilming- 
ton, within  a  few  hours  after  leaving  the  city  of  Raleigh. 

"The  next  inquiry  is,  by  what  means  the  vast  produc- 
tions of  the  fertile  West  can  be  made  to  travel  Eastward, 
and  reap  the  advantages  of  these  Railroad  facilities.  From 
personal  observation,  I  have  found  the  Roads,  leading  from 
Raleigh  Westward,  for  the  distance  of  fifty  or  sixty  miles, 
and  those  passing  over  similar  Geological  formations,  which 
range  from  Northeast  to  Southwest,  across  the  whole  State, 
separating  the  rich  valley  of  the  Yadkin  from  Fayetteville, 
decidedly  the  worst  in  the  State.     Thus  we  find  the  pro- 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED         245 

ductions  of  this  range,  often  seeking  a  market  much  more 
distant  than  our  own,  because  more  easy  of  access ;  the 
towns  of  Cheraw,  Camden,  Columbia,  and  in  the  far  West, 
Augusta  and  Charleston  are  much  more  familiarly  known 
than  even  Fayetteville  or  Raleigh ;  much  less,  those  Towns 
farther  Eastward ;  and  this  grows  out  of  the  impractica- 
bility, in  a  great  degree,  of  passing  over  our  Roads  with 
heavy  burdens  at  that  season  of  the  year,  most  convenient 
to  take  our  products  to  market.  The  remedy  for  these 
evils  is  believed  to  be  in  good  Turnpikes — improvements 
more  within  our  means  and  therefore  more  likely  to  be 
made,  and  answering  every  desirable  purpose.  I  therefore 
recommend  that  a  charter  be  granted,  to  make  a  Turnpike 
Road,  from  the  city  of  Raleigh  to  some  point  Westward, 
selected  with  a  view  to  its  ultimate  continuance  to  the 
extreme  West,  requiring  the  corporations  to  commence 
operations  at  Raleigh,  and  to  finish  specified  sections  of  the 
Road,  within  specified  periods,  and  making  it  forfeit  its 
charter  as  to  all  that  part  of  the  contemplated  Road,  which 
is  not  finished  in  the  time  prescribed,  but  granting  the 
privilege  to  charge  Tolls  on  all  such  parts  as  are  completed, 
having  a  due  regard  to  the  citizens  of  the  counties  through 
W'hich  the  Road  may  pass,  so  that  they  shall  not  be 
harrassed  by  unnecessary  exactions  on  those  parts  of  the 
Road  lying  in  the  counties  where  they  reside.  Such  a 
charter  would  hold  out  inducements  to  capitalists  to  embark 
in  the  enterprise,  as  they  could  abandon  it  whenever  they 
found  it  was  likely  to  be  injudicious,  and  yet  retain  what 
they  had  finished.  Should  this  Road  be  continued  to 
Waynesboro,  which  might  be  done  at  comparatively  small 
expense,  the  Farmer  would  have  the  choice  of  markets,  of 
Wilmington  by  the  Railroad,  or,  Newbern  by  the  river 
Neuse.  This  Turnpike,  it  is  confidently  believed,  would 
aid  greatly  to  sustain  the  Railroads,  and,  at  the  same  time 
to  give  Industry  facilities  to  which  it  is  now  a  stranger.^ 

"In  connection  w4th  these  Roads,  I  will  again  invite  your 
attention  to  the  facility  with  which  the  State  can  be  called 

1  Here  is  evidence  of  his  thought  along  the  line  of  a  Central  railroad. 


246  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

upon  for  payment.  If  either  of  these  Companies  shall 
fail  'to  pay  the  principal  and  interest  as  it  accrues,  the  Public 
Treasurer  is  authorized  to  pay  the  same,  out  of  any  money 
in  the  Treasury  at  the  time,'  and  for  this  the  faith  of  the 
State  is  pledged.  By  reference  to  the  amount  of  semi- 
annual interest,  and  annual  payment  of  principal,  which  are 
required  to  be  paid,  it  will  be  seen,  that  it  is  not  probable, 
nor  indeed  it  is  necessary,  that  there  should  be  in  the  Treas- 
ury at  all  times,  an  amount  sufficient  to  meet  these  contin- 
gencies, which,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  never  happen.  Yet, 
as  they  may  happen,  and  as  the  pledge  of  the  State  must  be 
kept,  under  all  circumstances,  inviolate,  and  its  faith  sus- 
tained, I  recommend  that  the  Treasurer  have  authority  to 
borrow,  from  our  Banks,  a  sum  not  exceeding,  at  any  one 
time,  the  amount  which  the  State  may  be  required  to  pay 
between  the  sessions  of  the  Legislature,  and  that  these  loans 
be  contracted  only  as  the  demands  are  made,  and  after  the 
funds  belonging  to  the  Treasury  are  exhausted. 

"By  a  Resolution  of  the  last  Legislature,  the  Treasurer 
was  directed  to  borrow,  from  the  Literary  and  Internal 
Improvement  Funds,  such  sums  as  might  be  necessary  to 
defray  the  expenses  of  the  State,  until  the  1st  Nov.,  1842 — 
'he,  at  no  time,  borrowing  more  than  is  required  for  the  time 
being,'  and  the  officers,  having  charge  of  these  Funds,  were 
directed  thus  to  loan  them.  The  inconvenience  of  this  plan, 
to  supply  the  wants  of  the  Treasury,  is  experienced  in  this : 
A  large  amount  of  these  funds  have  to  lie  idle  in  the  Treas- 
ury, to  be  ready  when  the  Treasurer  may  wish  to  borrow. 
The  Boards,  having  charge  of  the  funds,  are  thereby  re- 
strained from  seeking  for  them  permanent  investments, 
and  the  profits,  which  ought  to  arise  from  so  large  an 
amount,  is  greatly  diminished,  as  it  is  not  presumed  the 
Legislature  contemplated  paying  interest  on  any  more  than 
was  actually  used. 

"As  these  liabilities  of  the  Treasury  are  to  continue  for 
years  to  come,  it  is  the  part  of  prudence  to  make  provision 
to  meet  them  promptly,  no  matter  how  sudden  and  unex- 
pected the  call. 

"I  would  respectfully  invite  your  attention  to  the  Public 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  247 

Highways  generally.  In  the  Eastern  section  of  the  State, 
the  variety  of  navigable  sounds,  rivers  and  streams,  and  the 
excellent  adaptation  of  the  face  of  the  country,  to  good 
Roads  render  Legislative  negligence  on  these  subjects  less 
oppressive.  But  from  Fayetteville,  the  highest  point  of 
good  navigation  Westward  (and  only  the  navigation  in  our 
own  State,  in  that  direction,  except  the  slight  batteau  Navi- 
gation of  the  Dan,  as  high  as  the  county  of  Rockingham) 
to  the  Buncombe  Turnpike,  a  distance  of  some  two  hundred 
and  fifty  or  three  hundred  miles,  what  navigable  Stream, 
Railroad,  Turnpike,  or  McAdamized  highway  gives  to  the 
laborer  facilities  of  transportation?  None — literally,  none! 
This  vast  extent  of  territory,  reaching  from  the  Blue  Ridge 
in  the  West  to  the  alluvial  region  in  the  East,  and  extend- 
ing across  the  whole  State,  it  is  believed,  will  compare  with 
any  spot  upon  the  globe,  for  the  fertility  of  its  soil,  the 
variety  of  its  productions,  the  salubrity  of  its  climate,  the 
beauty  of  its  landscapes,  the  richne:ss  of  its  Mines,  the  facili- 
ties for  Manufactures,  and  the  intelligence  and  moral  worth 
of  its  population.  Can  another  such  territory,  combining  all 
these  advantages,  be  found  upon  the  face  of  the  whole 
earth,  so  wholly  destitute  of  natural  or  artificial  facilities 
for  Transportation? 

"I  direct  your  attention  to  the  wants  of  this  portion  of 
the  State — it  is  the  business  of  your  wisdom  to  supply  them. 
Fayetteville  seems  naturally  to  invite  the  commerce  of  the 
West.  Her  river  affords  as  good  and  durable  navigation 
as  most  rivers  in  the  South ;  her  exporting  port  of  Wilming- 
ton is  superior  to  those  of  Petersburg,  Richmond  and  many 
other  important  towns ;  and  the  wisdom  of  a  previous  Legis- 
lature thought  the  necessities  of  this  region  demanded  the 
advantages  which  a  Railroad  could  afford.  This  scheme 
having  failed,  it  is  believed,  from  the  pressure  of  the  times, 
the  next  inquiry  is — What  scheme,  that  is  practicable,  will 
afford  the  desired  facilities? 

"Next  to  Navigation  and  Railroads,  Turnpikes  afford 
the  best  means  of  taking  produce  to  market.  I  therefore 
recommend  that  a  charter  be  granted  to  make  a  Turnpike 
from  Fayetteville  to  the  Yadkin  river,  at  some  point  above 


248  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the  Narrows,  or,  if  deemed  most  expedient,  to  some  point  on 
a  similar  road  leading  from  Raleigh,  Westward,  thus  giving 
the  West  the  advantages  of  both  markets ;  with  such  favor- 
able conditions  in  the  charter,  as  heretofore  suggested,  that 
Capitalists  will  be  induced  to  embark  in  the  enterprise. 
And  surely  this  scheme  cannot  fail  for  want  of  means. 
Labor  will  be  an  excellent  substitute  for  money,  and  labor 
cannot  be  difficult  to  obtain,  in  a  region  now  growing  Cotton 
at  six  cents  per  lb.,  corn  at  one  dollar  per  bbl,  and  wheat  so 
low  that  it  takes  one-half  to  transport  the  other  half  to 
market.  Should  this  Road  ever  reach  the  Yadkin,  no  doubt 
is  entertained  of  its  continuance  across  the  Catawba,  west- 
ward— thus  giving  to  this  Road  the  advantages  which  will 
arise  from  the  navigation  of  these  two  noble  rivers,  from 
the  Falls  on  the  Southern  border  of  the  State,  now  wholly 
obstructing  their  navigation  for  a  greater  distance  towards 
their  sources. 

"The  Western  portion  of  the  State,  comprising  what 
may  be  termed  the  Mountain  Counties,  is  a  vastly  interesting 
region,  and  invites  your  due  regard.  To  make  them  more 
interesting,  we  only  have  to  make  them  more  accessible. 
The  sublimity  and  beauty  of  its  Mountain  Scenery,  the 
purity  of  its  waters,  the  buoyancy  and  salubrity  of  its  at- 
mosphere, the  fertility  of  its  valleys,  the  verdure  of  its 
mountains,  and,  above  all,  its  energetic,  intelligent  and  hos- 
pitable inhabitants,  make  it  an  inviting  portion  of  the  State. 
The  face  of  the  country  necessarily  makes  the  construction 
of  Roads  very  difficult  and  expensive,  and  the  sparseness  of 
the  population,  in  many  places,  forbids  the  imposition  of  a 
duty  so  onerous  upon  them.  These  Mountain  Roads  are 
made,  at  an  expense,  much  less  than  might  be  supposed ; 
and,  when  well  made,  are  very  firm  and  easily  kept  in  re- 
pair. The  rapid  descent  in  the  Streams  forbids  much  hope 
in  Navigation,  and,  therefore,  renders  their  claim  upon  the 
liberality  of  the  Legislature,  to  aid  them  in  these  Roads 
more  just  and  meritorious.  When  good  Roads  shall  be  es- 
tablished in  that  region,  it  is  believed  the  population  will  in- 
crease with  rapidity,  agriculture  improved,  grazing  will  be 
extended,   and   Manufactures  and  the   mechanic   Art  wall 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— COXTIXUED  249 

flourish  in  a  location  combining  so  many  advantages  and 
inviting  their  growth.  The  improved  highways  wall  be  ad- 
ditional inducement  to  the  citizens  of  other  sections  of  our 
State,  to  abandon  their  usual  Northern  Tours  or  visit  to  the 
Virginia  Watering  places  for  a  Tour  much  more  interesting 
among  our  own  Mountains,  much  cheaper  and  much  more 
beautiful — a  Tour  in  which  they  will  inspire  health  in  every 
breath,  and  drink  in  health  in  every  draught.  The  large 
amount  of  money  paid,  and  to  be  paid,  into  the  public 
Treasury,  from  that  quarter,  for  Vacant  and  Cherokee 
Lands,  would  seem  to  give  stronger  claims  to  aid  from  the 
Treasury.  It  is,  therefore,  respectfully  recommended,  that 
you  give  to  that  section  of  the  State,  such  aid,  as  in  your 
wisdom  its  condition  may  require,  and  the  condition  of  the 
public  Treasury  may  justify. 

"The  Buncombe  Turnpike,  in  which  the  State  is  a 
stock-holder,  shows  the  great  advantages  arising  from  such 
improvements,  and  its  profits,  of  twelve  to  fifteen  per  cent 
per  annum,  prove  the  great  use  of  it. 

"There  is  another  inconvenience  to  which  this  section  of 
the  State  labors,  and  to  which  I  deem  it  proper  to  call  your 
attention.  This  extensive  Territory  is  wholly  destitute  of 
Banking  facilities,  although  it  is  so  large  that  the  County, 
which  once  embraced  nearly  the  whole  of  it,  was  frequently 
dignified  with  the  appellation  of  a  State.  When  it  is 
recollected,  the  large  amount  that  is  due  to  the  State,  for  the 
sale  of  Cherokee  Lands,  it  becomes  a  matter  of  public 
interest,  that  the  debtors  who  reside  mostly  in  that  quarter, 
should  have  a  currency  among  them  in  which  to  make  pay- 
ment. 

"Turning  our  attention  to  the  Eastern  part  of  the  State, 
two  improvements,  said  to  be  practicable,  assume  an  im- 
portance that  renders  them  National  in  their  character.  I 
allude  to  the  opening  of  Roanoke  Inlet,  and  a  connection  of 
Pamlico  Sound,  by  a  Ship  Channel,  with  Beaufort  Harbor. 
Frequent  surveys  of  the  first  of  these  proposed  improve- 
ments, made  by  scientific  Engineers,  and,  more  particularly, 
one  latterly  made  under  the  authority  of  this  State,  by 
Maj.    Walter    Gwynn,    whose    qualifications,    endorsed  by 


250  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the  General  Government,  are  equalled  only  by  his  practical 
skill,  establish  the  feasibility  of  this  work.  The  advantages, 
arising  from  the  improvement  to  our  Commerce,  are  too 
obvious  to  need  pointing  out.  But  the  view  to  be  taken 
of  its  vast  importance,  is,  in  the  protection  it  will  afford  to 
our  shipping,  and  the  lives  of  our  seamen.  The  difficulty 
and  dangers  often  encountered  at  Ocracoke  Inlet,  render 
the  connection  between  Pamlico  Sound  and  Beaufort  Har- 
bor of  vast  importance  to  the  convenience  and  security  of 
our  Commerce  and  Shipping.  It  will  be  an  extension  of 
that  inland  navigation  so  essential  to  us,  in  time  of  war, 
and  give  access  to  one  of  the  safest  harbors  on  our  coast, 
and  one  from  which  a  Vessel  can  be  quicker  at  sea  than 
from  any  other,  perhaps,  on  our  Continent.  In  these  im- 
provements the  Commerce  of  the  nation^  is  interested ;  it 
becomes  the  duty  of  the  nation  to  make  them,  if  they  be 
practicable  and  proper.  I  therefore  recommend,  that  you 
bring  the  attention  of  Congress  to  the  subject,  in  the  manner 
most  likely  to  effect  the  object.  The  attention  of  Congress 
has  been  repeatedly  drawn  to  the  first  of  these  objects,  but 
nothing  is  yet  done.  We  should  assert  a  continual  claim 
to  our  right  to  have  this  work  effected  by  the  General  Gov- 
ernment. It  is  beyond  the  present  ability  of  the  State'  to 
execute  it,  and  if  it  were  not,  it  so  appropriately  belongs 
to  the  General  Government'  to  execute  it,  that  it  might  be 
considered  an  infringement  of  its  rights  for  the  State'  to  at- 
tempt it.  You  would  be  saved  the  trouble  of  this  appeal, 
if  the  nation'  could  witness  one  of  those  storms  so  frequent 
on  our  coast — could  witness  the  war  of  elements  which  rages 
around  Hatteras,  and  the  dangers  which  dance  about 
Ocracoke — could  witness  the  noble  daring  of  our  Pilots, 
and  the  ineffectual,  but  manly  struggles,  of  our  seamen — 
could  see  our  coast  fringed  with  wrecks,  and  our  towns 
filled  with  widows  and  orphans  of  our  gallant  tars.  Justice 
and  Humanity  would  extort  what  we  now  ask  in  vain.     If 

1  These  several  references  to  "State,"  "General  Government"  and  "na- 
tion," occurring  in  this  paragraph,  especially  in  the  use  of  capital  letters,  are 
unique  as  an  illustration  of  Governor  Morehead's  invariable  accuracy  in  the 
use  of  capital  letters  according  to  the  ruJes  of  the  day,  and  as  illustrating  the 
attitude  of  mind  of  the  day,  also,  in  his  section  of  the  land. 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  251 

one  tithe  of  the  destruction,  which  happens  on  our  coast, 
were  to  happen  in  Delaware  Bay  or  at  the  entrance  of  Bos- 
ton or  New  York  Harbors,  the  sensibilities  of  the  whole 
nation  would  be  aroused,  and  if  its  recurrence  could  be 
prevented  by  human  means,  such  appeals  would  be  thun- 
dered into  the  ears  of  Congress,  as  would  afford  the  pro- 
tection desired,  regardless  of  the  appropriation.  But  in- 
stead of  giving  us  the  protection  zve  so  much  need,  a  beg- 
garly sum  is  doled  out  to  North  Carolina,  to  repair  a  dilapi- 
dated Fort,  or  protect  an  abrading  sand-bank. 

"On  the  South  side  of  the  Cape  Fear,  is  a  considerable 
extent  of  Country,  watered  by  the  Lumber  River  and  its 
tributaries,  which  is  heavily  timbered,  and  would  become 
very  valuable  if  accessible  to  a  good  market.  That  river 
is  now  used  to  carry  lumber  to  Georgetown  in  South  Caro- 
lina ;  but  the  navigation  is  somewhat  obstructed  and  difficult, 
and  so  distant  is  the  market,  that  the  business  is  not  found 
profitable.  It  is  suggested,  by  those  better  acquainted  with 
the  geography  of  that  region  than  myself,  that  Lumber 
River  can  be  very  easily  connected  with  the  Cape  Fear  by  a 
Canal — that  the  expense  of  the  Canal,  and  of  opening  the 
river  to  improve  its  navigation,  will  be  inconsiderable,  com- 
pared with  the  advantages  derived  from  the  improvement. 
I  therefore  recommend,  that  a  survey  be  ordered,  to  ascer- 
tain the  practicability  of  uniting  these  rivers  by  a  good 
navigable  Canal,  and  that  an  estimate  be  made  of  its  proba- 
ble cost. 

"The  Judicial  Department  of  our  Government  has  been 
administered  with  promptness,  fidelity  and  ability;  but  I 
cannot  forbear  to  call  your  attention  to  the  frequent  acts 
of  violence  and  force  committed  upon  our  Jails,  whereby 
prisoners,  charged  with  the  highest  crimes,  are  released, 
rescued,  or  escape.  To  such  an  extent  has  this  been  carried, 
that  open  force  has  been  used,  and  that,  too,  I  believe,  in 
the  presence  of  the  Jailor  to  break  the  Jail,  seize  the  prison- 
ers, and  inflict  on  them  summary  punishment,  for  real  or 
supposed  offenses.  In  other  instances,  the  prisoners  have 
been  aided  in  their  escape,  by  external  force,  clandestinely 
used.     In  others,  by  the  use  of  instruments  furnished  them 


252  JOHX  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

in  prison.  Whether  these  frequent  and  repeated  offenses 
against  the  due  administration  of  Justice,  arise  from  the 
cowardice,  connivance  or  negligence  of  Jailors,  or  from  the 
delinquency  of  the  Magistrates  in  not  building  sufficient 
prisons,  are  questions  submitted  for  your  consideration, 
with  the  hope  that  you  will  apply  the  corrective,  if  the  pres- 
ent Laws  be  insufficient. 

"There  is  another  matter  connected  with  the  due  ad- 
ministration of  Criminal  Law,  that  deserves  attention. 
Criminals  have  been  permitted  to  go  at  large,  and  finally  to 
escape,  after  it  has  been  notoriously  known  that  they  have 
committed  offenses.  If  the  present  Law  on  that  subject  can 
be  improved,  I  recommend  that  it  be  done.  Nothing  affords 
such  ample  protection  to  the  Innocent,  as  the  certain  punish- 
ment of  the  Guilty. 

"The  President  and  Directors  of  the  Literary  Fund 
will  lay  before  you,  in  due  time,  a  detailed  Report  of  their 
Proceedings,  and  the  state  of  the  Fund,  and  of  the  extent 
of  their  operations  in  draining  the  Swamp  Land.  It  will  be 
your  duty,  as  it  is  the  desire  of  the  Literary  Board,  to  insti- 
tute the  most  rigid  examination  and  scrutiny  into  the  man- 
ner in  which  the  pecuniary  affairs  of  the  Board  have  been 
managed.  It  is  due  to  the  People  to  know  how  they  have 
been  managed ;  and  it  is  due  to  the  Board,  if  they  have  faith- 
fully discharged  their  duties,  that  their  Fellow  Citizens 
should  know  that  also. 

"And,  in  connection  with  this  examination,  I  would 
recommend  a  scrutiny  into  the  affairs  and  condition  of  the 
University  of  our  State.  It  is  the  child  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, and  should  be  watched  over  with  Parental  care  by  your 
Body.  It  is  believed  that  due  attention  is  not  paid  to  that 
important  Institution  by  the  Legislature.  Such  Reports  and 
examinations  are  not  made  as  will  give  the  Public  full  in- 
formation in  relation  to  its  management  and  utility;  and 
thus  Demagogues  sometimes  make  it  the  hobby,  upon  which 
they  ride  into  public  favor,  by  making  the  grossest  misrepre- 
sentations. 

"The  Report  of  the  Board  of  Internal  Improvements 
will  be  laid  before  you  during  the  present  Session,  which 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED         253 

does  not  promise  to  be  very  interesting,  as  the  Board  has  but 
little  under  its  charge  at  this  time,  besides  the  small  Fund 
under  its  control,  into  which  they  invite  the  strictest  scrutiny. 

"By  virtue  of  the  Act  authorizing  me  to  appoint  an  agent 
in  the  County  of  A'lacon  or  Qierokee,  for  the  purposes  there- 
in specified,  I  appointed  Jacob  Siler,  Esq.,  who  gave  the 
Bond  and  Security  required,  and  entered  upon  the  discharge 
of  his  duties.  His  communications  to  the  Treasury  De- 
partment will  give  you  the  information  as  to  his  progress. 
The  general  pecuniary  pressure,  the  scarcity  of  circulating 
medium  in  the  Western  part  of  the  State,  the  want  of  suf- 
ficient Roads  to  carry  Produce  to  Market,  and  the  outlays 
necessary  to  settle  a  new  Country,  all  combine  to  make  it 
extremely  difficult  to  pay  the  debt  due  the  State  upon  the 
Cherokee  Bonds,  and  it  is  believed  if  payments  thereon  be 
rigorously  exacted,  the  result  will  be,  in  many  instances, 
ruin  to  the  debtors  and  loss  to  the  State ;  but  if  reasonable 
indulgence  be  given,  it  is  probable  that  most  of  the  debts 
will  be  collected.  The  high  price,  for  which  these  Lands 
sold,  would  seem  to  justify  all  reasonable  indulgence. 

"A  Resolution  of  last  Session  having  authorized  me  to 
employ  Counsel  to  defend  the  Titles  of  Purchases  of  Lands 
in  Cherokee  County,  I  engaged  the  services  of  Thomas  L. 
Clingman,  Esq.,  who,  I  presume,  will  make  a  Report,  during 
the  Session,  upon  the  subject,  which  will  be  laid  before  you. 

"The  progress  of  civilization,  sustained  by  the  dictates 
of  humanity,  would  seem  to  appeal  to  public  liberality,  for 
the  establishment  of  Asylums  for  the  use  and  benefit  of  the 
Deaf,  Dumb  and  Blind,  and  for  the  protection  of  the  un- 
fortunate Lunatic.  The  helpless  and  suffering  condition 
of  many  of  these  afflicted  creatures,  have  long  since  and 
often  appealed  to  the  public  charity  of  a  Christian  com- 
munity. It  is  referred  to  you  to  say  how  unheeded  has 
been  that  appeal.  It  is  likewise  referred  to  you  to  say  how 
much  longer  we  shall  manifest  our  gross  ingratitude  to  Him, 
who  showers  upon  us,  with  the  hand  of  profusion,  all  the 
choice  blessings  of  life,  while  we  withhold  a  beggarly  pit- 
tance from  His  afflicted  Children. 

"The  establishment  of  a  Penitentiary,  in  this  State,  has 


254  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

lono-  been  a  matter  of  discussion,  and  it  is  probable, 
by  this  time,  that  Public  opinion  has  determined  upon  its 
expediency.  I  therefore  direct  your  attention  to  the  sub- 
ject. Long  experience  in  the  practice  of  the  Criminal  Courts 
has  satsified  me,  that  offenders  are  often  permitted  to  escape 
from  a  laudable  humanity  in  Jurors,  who  look  upon  the 
severity  and  ignominy  of  the  punishment  that  awaits  the 
culprit,  upon  a  verdict  of  Guilty,  until  their  kindlier  feelings 
conjure  up  doubts  enough  to  justify  a  conscientious  acquit- 
tal. It  is  believed  that  a  few  years  apprenticeship  in  a 
Penitentiary,  substituted  for  the  present  mode  of  punish- 
ment, would  cause  many  a  verdict  to  more  nearly  approxi- 
mate the  truth. 

"Whether  it  be  expedient  to  establish  these  institutions, 
and  if  expedient,  whether  this  is  a  proper  time  to  do  so — 
whether  you  will  embark  the  Funds  of  the  State,  in  any 
of  the  schemes  of  Internal  Improvement  heretofore  sug- 
gested— are  matters  for  your  consideration. 

"To  you,  the  consideration  of  these  matters  appropriately 
belongs — in  you,  the  powers  of  taxation  and  appropriation 
are  constitutionally  vested.  You  are  fresh  from  your  Con- 
stituents, and  doubtless  well  advised  as  to  their  wishes  and 
wants — to  them,  you  are  responsible  for  the  manner  in 
which  you  shall  discharge  the  high  trusts  confided  to  you, 
and  therefore  to  you  are  these  matters  most  respectfully 
referred. 

"I  would  recommend,  that  whatever  schemes  of  ex- 
penditure you  may  embark  in,  that  you  keep  within  the 
means  at  the  command  of  the  State ;  otherwise,  the  People 
must  be  taxed  more  heavily,  or  the  State  must  contract 
a  Loan.  The  pressure  of  the  times,  forbids  the  former — 
the  tarnished  honor  of  some  of  the  States  should  make  us, 
for  the  present,  decline  the   latter. 

"The  mania  for  State  Banking,  and  the  mad  career  of 
Internal  Improvement,  which  seized  a  number  of  the  States, 
have  involved  them  in  an  indebtedness,  very  oppressive,  but 
not  hopeless.  American  credit  and  character  require  that 
the  stain  of  violated  faith  should  be  obliterated,  by  our  hon- 
est acknowledgment  of  the  debt,  and  a  still  more  honest 


GOVERNOR  AXD  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  255 

•effort  to  pay  it.  I  therefore  recommend  the  passage  of 
Resolutions,  expressive  of  the  strong  interest  which  the 
State  feels  in  the  full  redemption  of  every  pledge  of  Public 
faith,  and  of  its  utter  detestation  of  the  abominable  doctrine 
of  Repudiation.  That  State,  which  honestly  owes  a  debt, 
and  has,  or  can  command  the  means  of  payment  and  refuses 
to  pay,  because  it  cannot  be  compelled  to  do  so,  has  already 
bartered  Public  Honor,  and  only  awaits  an  increase  of  price, 
to  barter  Public  Liberty.  This  recommendation  will  come 
wdth  peculiar  force  from  you.  North  Carolina  has  been 
jeered  at  for  sluggishness  and  indolence,  because  she  has 
chosen  to  guard  her  Treasury  and  protect  her  Honor,  by 
avoiding  debt,  and  promptly  meeting  her  engagements. 
She  has  yielded  to  others  the  glory  of  their  magnificent 
expenditures,  and  will  yield  them  all  that  glory  which  will 
arise  from  a  repudiation  of  their  contracts.  In  the  language 
of  one  of  her  noblest  sons,  Tt  is  better  for  her  to  sleep  on 
in  indolence  and  innocence,  than  to  wake  up  in  infamy  and 
treason.' 

''But  when  Public  Honor  is  at  stake,  or  Public  Liberty 
endangered,  she  will  shake  the  poppy  from  her  brow ;  and 
then,  for  her  high-souled  patriotism,  for  her  unwavering 
devotion  to  the  love  of  Liberty,  for  her  loyalty  to  the  Union, 
and  for  her  stern  integrity,  the  proudest  sister  of  the  Re- 
public may  well  desire  to  be  her  rival. 

"The  Civil  commotion,  which  has  lately  disturbed  the 
patriotic  State  of  Rhode  Island,  is  deeply  to  be  regretted, 
and  its  termination  in  a  conflict  might  have  been  attended 
with  serious  consequences  to  other  States.*  Aside  then 
from  mere  sympathy,  we  cannot  be  indifferent  spectators. 
Inequality  in  the  right  of  suffrage  is  the  ground  upon 
which  resistance  to  the  constituted  authorities  and  overt 
acts  of  rebellion  are  attempted  to  be  justified.  Without 
passing  upon  the  merits  of  the  issue  between  the  parties,  in 
that  State,  I  am  constrained  to  say,  that  there  is  a  spirit 
too  often  manifested  in  our  country,  to  enforce  our  sup- 


^  "Dorr's  Rebellion"  to  secure  re\'ision  of  the  constitution,  which  later  was 
secured  in  1842. 


256  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

posed  rights,  or  to  redress  our  supposed  grievances,  by  ap- 
peals to  open  resistance,  rather  than  to  Law,  to  reason, 
and  to  a  returning  sense  of  Justice.  It  is  not  every  griev- 
ance, under  which  a  people  may  labor,  that  justifies  a 
resort  to  force  for  redress;  nor  is  it  believed,  that  in  any 
portion  of  our  enlightened  country,  in  this  enlightened  age, 
will  a  course  of  policy  be  persisted  in,  that  is  grossly  unjust 
and  oppressive.  The  steady  appeal  to  right  and  reason,  is 
sure  in  due  time  to  procure  the  appropriate  remedy.  The 
example  of  our  own  State,  in  her  steady  efforts  to  reform 
her  representation,  by  appeals  to  the  justice  of  her  claims, 
and  the  success  which  eventually  crowned  those  efforts, 
is  proof  of  the  wisdom  of  that  policy.  I  therefore  deem  it 
the  duty  of  all  friends  of  social  order,  to  rebuke,  on  all 
occasions,  that  spirit  which  is  every  ready  to  light  the  torch 
of  civil  discord,  and  revel  in  the  blood  of  a  brother. 

"Our  Banks  resumed  specie  payments  during  the  past 
summer,  and  it  is  believed  will  be  able  to  sustain  themselves 
in  future.  But,  while  they  afford  us  a  sound  Currency, 
it  is  to  be  regretted,  that  they  are  not  enabled  to  extend  their 
accommodations,  and  increase  circulation,  to  that  extent  the 
necessities  of  the  community  require. 

"North  Carolina,  although  an  Atlantic  State,  is  to  a 
great  extent,  in  the  condition  of  some  of  the  interior  States. 
She  has  no  large  commercial  mart,  from  which  is  shipped 
the  principal  productions  of  her  industry.  These  are 
shipped  mostly  from  the  Ports  of  Virginia  and  South  Caro- 
lina. The  balances  against  her  at  the  North,  contracted 
for  the  immense  quantity  of  merchandise  purchased  there, 
have  to  be  paid  in  cash.  Our  Bank  notes  have  to  supply 
this  cost,  either  by  being  presented  at  once  for  specie,  and 
that  taken  to  the  North,  and  there  shaved  to  the  Brokers  at  a 
discount  (which  a  prompt  redemption  in  specie  cannot  pre- 
vent), who  forthwith  present  them  at  Bank  for  payment  in 
specie,  or  its  equivalent.  Thus,  the  perpetual  flow  of  our 
Bank  notes  Northward,  to  pay  balances  against  us,  is  met  by 
a  counter-current  of  the  same  notes  Southward — not  to  pay 
balances  in  our  favor — not  to  be  thrown  again  into  circula- 
tion by  the  purchase  of  our  produce — but  to  stop  them  from 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  257 

circulation,  by  pushing  them  into  the  Banks  and  drawing 
out  the  specie  from  them.  The  only  means  of  protection 
against  these  continued  drains,  which  our  Banks  can  resort 
to,  is  to  curtail  their  circulation — the  very  thing  that  oper- 
ates against  the  community,  but  the  only  thing  which  can 
prevent  them  from  being  driven  again  into  another  suspen- 
sion. If  we  had  a  National  Currency  at  par  in  every  part 
of  the  Union,  by  which  to  pay  these  balances  against  us, 
that  Currency  would  never  touch  the  hands  of  the  Broker. 
It  would  be  thrown  into  circulation  in  every  direction, 
instead  of  being  thrown  back  upon  the  Bank  that  issued  it. 
Our  own  notes  would  remain  among  us — there  would  be 
little  demand  for  specie,  as  but  few  would  return  upon 
the  Banks,  and  they  would  thus  be  enabled  to  throw  a  much 
larger  amount  in  circulation,  without  the  risk  of  their  sud- 
den return  for  specie,  and  without  the  risk  of  being  driven 
again  into  another  suspension.  The  hopes  of  having  Na- 
tional Currency  has  been  twice  thwarted  by  the  President's 
Vetoes  upon  Charters  for  National  Banks.  Whether  he 
will  continue  regardless  of  the  will  and  of  the  sufferings  of 
the  people,  time  will  disclose.  Whether  the  examples  of 
Washington  and  of  Madison  are  unworthy  of  his  imitation, 
he  must  decide.  One  thing  we  all  know — from  the  time 
of  the  first  establishment  of  the  first  National  Bank,  to  the 
present  time,  whenever  we  have  been  without  that  Institu- 
tion, our  pecuniary  affairs  have  been  greatly  deranged.  In 
this  State,  the  issue  of  a  National  Bank  has  been  fairly  sub- 
mitted to  the  people  by  the  rival  candidates,  in  the  two  last 
gubernatorial  elections.  The  result,  each  time,  proves  the 
majority  to  be  in  favor  of  such  an  Institution.  It  is, 
therefore,  respectfully  submitted,  whether  you  ought  not 
to  aid,  by  all  the  means  as  your  command,  to  carry  out  this 
expressed  will  of  your  Constituents. 

"The  disease,  under  which  the  National  prosperity 
labors,  is  the  want  of  facility  in  Exchanges  and  a  sound 
uniform  National  Currency.  The  remedy,  resorted  to  in 
some  of  the  States,  is  the  establishment  of  State  Banks, 
which  throw  in  circulation  a  supply  of  notes,  which  for  a 
moment  seems  to  give   relief,  but  these  notes  have  only 


258  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

to  take  a  turn  or  two  Northward,  and  back  again,  to  be 
redeemed  with  specie,  and  the  vaults  are  empty — the  Bank 
suspends — the  notes  become  valueless,  and  the  remedy  turns 
out  to  be  a  wretched  quackery,  that  aggravates  the  disease. 
Banks  owned  by  States,  so  located  as  to  be  subject  to  these 
continued  drains  of  their  specie,  cannot  withstand  the  oper- 
ation, any  more  than  those  owned  by  individuals. 

"The  passage  of  a  new  Tariff  of  duties,  at  the  last  Ses- 
sion of  Congress,  it  is  hoped,  will  relieve  the  nation  from  the 
temporary  shifts  of  issuing  Treasury  notes,  or  of  resorting 
to  loans  to  meet  its  current  expenses,  and  to  pay  its  debts. 
Already  its  effects  are  visible  in  the  increased  activity  of 
American  Industry,  and  in  the  growling  tone  of  some  of  the 
European  Journals,  and  in  due  time,  it  is  believed,  will  be 
visible  in  the  increase  of  our  Revenue.  But  scarcely  has  the 
law  gone  into  operation,  before  we  hear  its  repeal  threat- 
ened, because  its  object  is  something  besides  raising  Reve- 
nue. It  is  high  time,  the  principles,  under  which  duties 
may  be  imposed,  should  be  settled  and  adhered  to.  The 
principle  being  settled,  the  extent  to  which  the  power  may 
be  exercised  then  becomes  a  matter  of  expediency.  All 
agree  that  duties  may  be  imposed  to  raise  Revenue,  but 
some  contend  that  they  can  be  imposed  for  no  other  object. 
If  this  latter  doctrine  be  true,  then  are  we  shorn  of  some  of 
the  most  important  prerogatives  of  a  sovereign  People — then 
may  we  be  subjected  to  the  most  abject  commercial  Slavery. 
If  it  be  admitted  that  Europe  can  pour  into  our  Country 
the  excessive  productions  of  her  pauper  labor,  whenever 
she  chooses,  and  can  exclude  our  productions  from  her 
Markets,  or  tax  them  so  high  as  to  be  ruinous  to  us,  and 
that  we  have  no  power  to  protect  ourselves  against  the  influx 
of  the  one,  or  to  counteract  the  oppressive  exclusion,  or 
heavy  exactions  of  the  other — then,  indeed,  are  we  in  a 
helpless  condition.  The  avowal  of  this  doctrine  is  well  cal- 
culated to  invite  Foreign  Powers,  who  are  so  inclined  to 
forget  right,  to  impose  all  such  tyrannical  restrictions  upon 
our  commerce,  as  their  cupidity  may  suggest.  Indeed,  for 
some  time  past,  we  have  been  approximating  this  condition. 
Europe  has  been  flooding  our  Country  with  the  products  of 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  259 

her  labor,  at  a  tax  of  some  20  per  cent,  while  the  produc- 
tions of  American  Labor  have  been  either  totally  excluded 
from  her  markets,  or  taxed  from  50  to  2500  per  cent.  Her 
writers  upon  the  wealth  of  Nations  descant  to  us  upon  the 
beauties  of  Free  Trade.  Her  political  Orators  and  Jour- 
nals shout  to  us,  across  the  Atlantic — 'Free  Trade' — and 
the  glorious  privilege  of  buying  from  whom  you  please. 

"Some  of  us  re-echo  Free  Trade,  and  the  glorious  privi- 
lege of  buying  of  whom  we  please.  But  from  none  of  these 
do  we  hear  the  shout  of  Free  Trade  and  the  glorious  privi- 
lege of  selling  where  we  please  and  to  whom  we  choose. 
It  is  as  important  to  us  to  have  the  privilege  of  selling, 
without  exorbitant  exactions,  as  it  is  to  buy  without  them. 
H  every  facility  and  inducement  to  purchase  the  industry 
of  others  are  opened  to  us — but  every  facility  and  induce- 
ment to  sell  the  products  of  our  industry  are  obstructed  or 
closed,  then  must  we  become,  most  surely,  a  ruined  people. 
This  sentiment  was  uttered  by  one  of  our  most  distinguished 
Presidents,  in  1824,  in  relation  to  a  Tariff,  and  at  that  time 
when  he  was  before  the  people  as  a  candidate  for  that  high 
office,  is  fully  sustained  by  eighteen  years  of  subsequent  ex- 
perience. He  said — Tn  short.  Sir,  we  have  been  too  long 
subject  to  the  policy  of  British  Merchants.  It  is  time  we 
should  become  a  little  more  Americanised,  and,  instead  of 
feeding  the  paupers  and  laborers  of  Europe,  feed  our  own; 
or,  else,  in  a  short  time,  by  continuing  our  present  policy, 
we  shall  be  rendered  paupers  ourselves.'  The  policy  then 
recommended  by  him  has  not  been  pursued,  and  how  truly 
he  shadowed  forth  our  present  condition.  Let  us  resist 
the  policy  of  British  Merchants;  let  us  become  a  good  deal 
more  Americanised;  let  us  feed  our  own  paupers  and 
laborers,  instead  of  feeding  those  of  England ;  let  us  aban- 
don that  policy  which  leads  to  Pauperism,  and  adopt  that 
which  will  raise  paupers  and  laborers  to  competency  and 
independence.  Let  us  declare  our  Commercial  Indepen- 
dence and  proclaim  to  the  world,  we  have  the  power  not 
only  to  raise  Revenue  by  imposing  duties,  but  that  we  have 
the  power,  by  imposing  them,  to  protect  American  Industry 
against  European  Industry,  and  to  counteract  by  our  Legis- 


260  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

lation  any  foreign  Legislation  hostile  to  our  interests.  But, 
at  the  same  time,  let  us  invite  all  nations  to  a  commercial 
intercourse  with  us,  upon  terms  of  the  most  extended  liber- 
ality, but,  they  must  be  terms  of  equality  and  reciprocity. 

"That  the  General  Government  has  power  to  impose 
duties  for  the  protection  of  American  Industry,  against 
European  Industry,  and  to  counteract  foreign  legislation 
hostile  to  our  Interests,  I  think  can  admit  of  no  doubt. 
When  the  States  became  independent,  they  had  the  power 
unquestionably.  All  their  powers  to  impose  duties,  they 
transferred  to  the  General  Government  by  the  adoption  of 
the  Constitution.  They  then  ceased  to  have  the  power; 
and,  if  the  General  Government  has  it  not,  then  the  power 
is  extinct.     Is  there  an  American  willing  to  admit  this? 

"I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  advocating  a  high 
Tariff.  I  contend  for  the  power  to  impose  it,  if  we  think 
our  interests  require  it.  I  advocate  the  doctrine  of  Free 
Trade,  as  far  as  it  is  practicable;  but  when  it  ceases  to  be 
practicable,  unless  at  a  ruinous  sacrifice  to  us,  I  abandon  it, 
and  say  to  the  world — ^'We  will  do  unto  others  as  they  do 
unto  us.' 

"I  have  thought  it  proper,  on  this  occasion,  to  say  thus 
much  on  this  important  subject.  The  American  people 
ought  to  know  the  general  opinion  of  the  Union  upon  it; 
that  they  may  make  some  calculation  what  is  likely  to  be  the 
course  of  policy  pursued  for  the  future.  Frequent  legis- 
lation on  the  subject,  from  one  extreme  to  another,  defeats 
the  best  devised  plans,  baffles  the  wisest  calculations,  and 
often  destroys  hopes  well  founded.  The  suspense  in  which 
the  people  are  kept,  checks  their  energy,  curbs  their  enter- 
prise, and  kills  their  prosperity. 

"I  had  long  entertained  the  hope,  upon  the  payment  of 
our  National  Debt,  the  proceeds  arising  from  the  sales  of 
Public  Lands,  would  be  distributed  among  the  States,  to 
which  they  so  justly  belong.  This  Fund  would  aid  the 
States  greatly  in  the  Education  of  their  Youth,  and  in  their 
sphemes  of  Improvement.  But  if  we  wish  to  expend  more 
than  the  means  now  at  our  command,  we  shall  have  to  resort 
to  an  increase  in  Taxes  upon  our  citizens.     The  President 


GOVERXOR  AXD  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED         261 

has  thought  proper  to  interpose  himself  between  us  and  our 
just  rights  and  deprive  us,  for  the  present,  of  the  Funds 
arising  from  that  source.  He  had  the  power  to  do  so,  and 
we  must  submit  until  the  time  shall  arrive,  for  us  to  exercise 
the  power  vested  in  us,  by  removing  the  obstruction,  and 
taking  possession  of  what  is  so  justly  ours. 

"The  President  having  called  an  extra  Session  of  Con- 
gress in  1841,  prior  to  the  regular  Congressional  Elections 
in  our  State,  it  became  my  duty  to  order  an  Election  for 
Members  of  the  present  Congress,  by  Proclamation. 

"In  the  death  of  the  Hon.  Lewis  Williams,  the  late  Rep- 
resentative in  the  thirteenth  Congressional  District,  the 
House  of  Representatives  was  deprived  of  its  oldest,  and 
one  of  the  most  efficient  Members,  the  State  one  of  its  ablest 
and  most  faithful  Representatives,  and  the  community,  of 
one  of  its  best,  most  honored  and  most  esteemed  citizens. 
A  Writ  of  Election  was  issued  to  supply  the  vacancy,  which 
resulted  in  the  election  of  the  Hon.  Anderson  Mitchell,  of 
Wilkes. 

"By  the  death  of  Alexander  Troy,  Esq.,  late  Solicitor 
of  the  fifth  Judicial  Circuit,  the  State  was  deprived  of  an 
excellent  officer,  and  of  a  most  estimable  citizen.  A  tempo- 
rary appointment,  by  the  Presiding  Judge,  of  Hon.  Robert 
Strange,  was  made  to  fill  the  vacancy.  It  will  be  your  duty 
to  elect  his  successor.  Solicitors  for  the  second  and  fourth 
Judicial  Circuits  are  likewise  to  be  elected. 

"The  Report  of  the  State  and  progress  of  Common 
Schools  is  necessarily  too  long  for  this  Communication,  and 
will  constitute  a  part  of  the  Report  of  the  Literary  Board. 

"Having  received  the  resignations,  in  file  A,  of  William 
B.  Shepard,  Esq.,  the  Senator  elect  from  the  first  Senatorial 
District ;  of  Elisha  Bostick,  a  member  elect  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  from  the  County  of  Richmond ;  and  of  Robert  T. 
Paine,  a  member  elect  of  the  same  House,  for  the  County 
of  Chowan,  I  issued  Writs  of  Election  to  supply  these  vacan- 
cies. 

"The  accompanying  File,  marked  B,  contains  the  resig- 
nations of  Justices  of  the  Peace,  made  since  the  last  Ses- 
sion. 


262  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

"The  accompanying  File  C,  contains  Resolutions  passed 
by  the  Legislatures  of  the  following  States,  viz.:  Maine, 
Massachusetts,  Vermont,  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  New 
York,  New  Jersey,  Delaware,  Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  Vir- 
ginia, South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Alabama,  Mississippi,  Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky  and  Indiana.  These  Resolutions  refer  to 
the  following  subjects: 

"The  death  of  the  President  and  the  donation  to  his 

Widow ; 

"The  amendment  of  the  Constitution  as  to  the  Veto 
Power,  and  the  Presidential  term  of  service,  and  the  pas- 
sage of  a  Law,  requiring  Electors  for  President  to  be  elected 
on  the  same  day  throughout  the  Union; 

"The  Revenue  and  Tarifif,  protective  and  discriminating ; 

"The  Public  Lands,  and  the  distribution  of  the  proceeds 
of  the  sales  thereof ; 

"The  demand  of  fugitives  from  justice,  embracing  the 
demand  of  persons,  charged  with  Negro  stealing  and  the 
correspondence  on  the  subject; 

"The  Northeast  Boundary ; 

"The  admission  of  Texas  into  the  Union; 

"The  U.  S.  Bank,  or  Fiscal  Corporation; 

"The  Bankrupt  Law; 

"The  Sub-Treasury; 

"The  Repudiation  of  State  debts ; 

"The  surviving  Soldiers  of  the  Revolution; 

"The  Military  Academy  at  West  Point; 

"The  Loan  Bill  and  One  Hour  rule  of  the  House  of 
Representatives. 

"The  term  of  service  of  Hon.  William  A.  Graham,  a 
Senator  of  the  United  States  from  this  State,  expires  with 
the  present  Congress.    You  will  supply  the  vacancy. 

"During  the  past  Spring,  I  received  the  Standard  Yard 
Measure  and  Ounce  Weights  furnished  by  the  General 
Government.  I  advertised  for  a  Contract  to  make  dupli- 
cates thereof,  to  be  furnished  to  the  several  Counties  agree- 
ably to  Act  of  Assembly.  Having  received  no  bid,  through 
the  agency  of  a  gentleman  travelling  Northward,  I  endeav- 
ored to  get  a  contract  to  make  them  in  that  direction.     A 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  263 

proposition  has  been  received,  to  execute  the  work  in  a 
style  so  superior,  and  at  a  price  so  far  above  anything  con- 
templated by  the  Legislature,  that  I  did  not  feel  warranted 
in  accepting  the  proposition.  The  capacity  measures,  in- 
tended for  Standards,  were  not  then  ready,  and  have  not 
been  received. 

"By  a  Resolution  of  the  Last  Session,  I  was  directed  to 
cause  the  1st  Volume  of  the  Revised  Statutes,  to  be  dis- 
tributed to  such  Magistrates  as  had  been  appointed  since 
1836.  I  have  caused  all  the  copies  at  this  place,  except  such 
as  are  required  to  be  retained,  to  be  distributed ;  and  it  is  be- 
lieved, a  few  Magistrates  are  not  yet  supplied.  There  were 
a  few  extra  copies  in  some  counties,  from  which  I  have  en- 
deavored to  supply  those  who  were  not  supplied. 

"In  conclusion,  Gentlemen,  should  the  wisdom  of  your 
Counsels  tend  to  elevate  the  moral  character  of  our  State, 
to  enlighten  its  youth,  to  relieve  the  helpless,  to  reform  of- 
fenders, to  protect  the  innocent,  to  improve  our  physical 
condition,  to  aid  the  debtors,  to  reward  industry,  and  to  en- 
courage honesty,  integrity  and  morality,  none  will  be  more 
grateful  to  you  for  the  essential  services,  than 
"Your  Fellow  Citizen 

"and  humble  Servant 

"J.  M.  Morehead."' 

No  more  statesman-like  executive  message  ever  issued 
from  any  gubernatorial  chair  in  the  United  States ;  and,  in 
its  national  and  international  aspect,  it  is  worthy  of  any  oc- 
cupant of  the  Presidential  chair.  It  was  widely  circulated 
and  its  principles  are  still  advocated  and  sometimes  has  been 
quoted  by  his  successsors  down  to  the  present  generation. 
Here  is  a  conception  of  transportation  that  was  to  become 
his  chief  theme  for  the  rest  of  his  life;  and  his  latest  suc- 
cessor, as  this  is  written,  is  still  carrying  them  out  to  their 
logical  conclusion.  The  Whigs  were  of  course  finding  it 
the  produest  day  of  their  lives  in  North  Carolina. 

Among  expressions  outside  of  the  State  concerning  the 
Whig  executive's  message  was  a  notable  and  typical  one 

^Raleigh  Register,  25th  November,  1842;  and  official  reports. 


264  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

from  the  Alabama  Times:  "The  Message  we  have  read 
with  great  pleasure.  It  is  the  Message  of  a  Whig  Governor 
to  a  Loco  Foco  Legislature.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Gov. 
Morehead  was  re-elected  in  August  last,  over  his  Loco  Foco 
opponent,  Louis  D.  Henry,  of  Fayetteville,  by  the  same  voters 
that  elected  a  Loco  Foco  majority  in  the  two  houses  of  the 
Legislature.  The  language  of  the  Message  is  marked 
throughout  with  a  bold  and  fearless  spirit  worthy  of  the  hon- 
ors the  Old  North  State  has  bestowed  upon  its  author,  and 
well  worthy  of  being  made  an  example  by  older  heads  than 
Gov.  Morehead's.  Governor  Morehead  we  view  as  one  of 
the  Old  North  State's  most  promising  sons.  He  may  be 
termed  a  young  man,  his  age  being  between  40  and  45.  He 
is  a  fine  orator,  a  good  scholar,  and  is  justly  considered  a 
man  of  fine  talents.  There  is  something  noble  in  his 
ordinary  appearance,  his  private  conversation  is  always  re- 
markably interesting;  and  when  speaking  his  fine  appear- 
ance, his  manners  and  gestures  are  well  calculated  to  make 
an  impression  on  all  present  that  he  is  no  ordinary  man."^ 

Still  further  abroad,  in  the  London  Sun,  his  vigorous 
sentiments  on  public  credit  and  honor  attracted  attention. 
After  expressing  itself  upon  repudiation  by  certain  of  the 
states,  it  said:  "With  this  view  we  republish  the  following 
extract  from  the  Message  of  the  Governor  of  North  Caro- 
lina;" and,  following  the  extract,  continued:  We  hope  to  see 
more  and  more  of  the  same  kind  of  language  in  the  speeches 
of  American  statesmen.  The  stain  produced  upon  their 
character  by  the  repudiating  doctrines  of  the  notorious  Mc- 
Nutt  [of  Mississippi]  sticks  so  thick  over  them,  that  it  will 
require  a  great  deal  of  active  honesty  to  wash  out  the  filth. 
A  few  such  men  as  Governor  Morehead  of  North  Caro- 
lina, might  do  much  to  restore  the  lost  credit  of  the  United 
States  in  the  European  money  market."- 

The  National  Intelligencer  of  Washington  quoted  from  it 
liberally  and  said  it  "is  very  justly  commended  for  its  wis- 
dom and  its  patriotism;"  while  the  Richmond  Whig  in  com- 
plimenting it,  said :   "Upon  the  whole,  we  must  say  that  the 

1  Raleigh  Register,  Jan.  3,  1843. 
^Ibid.,  10th  Feb.,  1843. 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  265 

Government  of  North  Carolina  is  obviously  in  a  most  un- 
democratic state.  It  is  not  in  confusion ;  it  is  not  in  debt ; 
its  monied  institutions  are  somewhat  more  than  so-called. 
Its  public  honor  seems  unshaken,  the  authority  of  its  laws 
gently  but  firmly  maintained  over  an  orderly  and  moral 
people;  there  is  no  talk  of  either  Repudiation  or  Relief; 
and  such,  in  a  word,  is  the  whole  condition  of  the  State, 
that  the  Governor  is  able,  through  his  Message  generally, 
rather  to  propose  meliorations  and  plans  of  Improvement, 
than  to  offer  idle  projects  for  averting  the  ruin  which  bad 
Legislation  and  Public  Immorality  have,  in  many  States, 
pulled  down,  in  hideous  overthrow,  upon  the  whole  com- 
munity." 

What  the  Democratic  Assembly  did  with  his  suggestions 
is  best  told  in  the  words  of  a  Raleigh  Whig  editor:  "The 
Session  Has  Been  the  Longest  Ever  Held  in  North 
Carolina!  It  commenced  on  Monday,  the  21st  of  No- 
vember, 1842 — and  ended  on  Saturday,  the  28th  day  of 
January,  1843 — a  period  of  sixty-nine  days!  The  people 
will  scrutinize  the  captions  of  the  acts  passed,  which  we 
publish  today,  in  vain,  if  they  expect  to  find  any  equivalent 
for  the  time  wasted,  or  money  squandered !  They  will  pore 
in  vain  over  this  'beggarly  account  of  empty  boxes,'  if  they 
hope  to  find  any  realization  of  the  splendid  promises  made 
by  the  Loco  Foco  Candidate,  whilst  canvassing  the  State. 
No  provision  has  been  made  for  the  public  necessities — noth- 
ing, absolutely  nothing  has  been  done  to  promote  the 
common  interest.  With  a  majority  of  thirty,  or  thereabouts, 
on  joint  ballot — with  the  numerical  strength  to  pass  any 
measure — the  Loco  Foco  Legislature  adjourned,  without 
having  matured  one  single  proposition  to  better  the 
CONDITION  OF  THE  PEOPLE."^  One  reason  for  this  was  the 
very  radical  reapportionment  made  necessary  by  the  new 
census — always  a  very  difficult  matter.  Three  new  western 
counties  were  created  also ;  and  there  were  seventy-six  pri- 
vate acts.  Another  feature  was  the  Democratic  agitation 
against  the  State  banks,  but  when  the  State  Bank  itself 

1  Raleigh  Register,  31st  Jan.,  1843. 


266  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

asked  to  be  allowed  to  close  up  its  affairs,  the  gage  of  battle 
was  not  accepted ;  and  also  much  time  was  spent  in  trying 
to  instruct  Whig  national  senators  by  a  Democratic  Assem- 
bly. This  is  of  course  the  Whig  attitude  at  this  time,  an 
attitude  which  is  necessary  to  the  understanding  of  this 
narrative.  The  whole  internal  improvement  plan  was 
turned  down  on  the  ground  that  the  railroads,  private  cor- 
porations, had  to  call  for  help  from  the  state,  in  these 
financially  difficult  years.  Senator  William  A.  Graham, 
Whig,  was  replaced  in  the  national  Senate  by  a  Democrat, 
which  at  once  made  him  a  favorite  candidate  to  succeed 
Governor  Morehead,  even  as  early  as  March,  1843. 

This  situation  made  it  unnecessary  for  Governor  More- 
head  to  say  much  at  his  second  inauguration  on  January  1, 
1843,  but  one  may  see  what  he  thought  of  his  oath  of  office, 
in  a  letter  of  December  17th  previously  to  Chief  Justice 
Ruffin  concerning  the  oath  of  office  where  he  says  he  ex- 
pects to  qualify  on  the  31st,  and  also  says:  "I  look  upon 
the  installation  of  the  Executive  as  anything  else  than  a 
mere  empty  pageant  or  idle  show,  at  least  so  far  as  he  is 
concerned.  Although  the  powers  of  the  Executive  of  our 
State  are  very  limited,  and  but  little  room  is  left  for  the  dis- 
cretionary exercise  of  them — which  is  the  evidence  of  the 
excellence  of  our  institutions,  which  regulates  by  law  every- 
thing so  far  as  it  is  practicable — it  becomes  the  more  im- 
portant to  watch  over  that  excellence.  The  solemnity  of  the 
obligations,  which  the  Executive  assumes  when  about  to 
enter  upon  the  discharge  of  his  duties,  is  well  calculated  to 
strengthen  that  frailty  to  which  poor  human  nature  is  too 
often  a  victim,  and  to  nerve  that  firmness  necessary  to  a 
faithful  discharge  of  those  duties.  I  think  there  is  great 
propriety  in  the  oaths  of  office  being  administered  to  the 
Executive  by  the  highest  officer  of  the  Judicial  Department, 
in  the  presence  of  the  Legislature.  And  it  will  be  additional 
gratification  to  me  to  have  these  Oaths  administered  by  the 
high  Judicial  Officer  in  the  person  of  yourself."^ 

The  amount  of  detailed  purely  executive  business  that 

1  The  Ruffin  Papers,  Hamilton,  Vol.  2,  p.  212. 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED         267 

comes  before  a  Governor  is  startling  to  one  who  has  occa- 
sion to  see  it  for  the  first  time.  It  was  not  less  so  with 
Governor  Morehead.  One  of  the  few  times  in  his  life,  he 
was  ill  for  several  weeks  in  the  summer  of  1843,  so  that 
on  August  24th,  he  left  for  a  vacation  in  the  old  home  of 
his  boyhood  in  Rockingham  county  where  his  mother  was 
still  living.  His  health  was  restored  and  he  was  back  in 
Raleigh  by  the  middle  of  September.  The  Whigs  had  be- 
come very  active  again  and  by  October,  the  Oxford  Mercury 
urged  that  the  national  ticket  be  "Clay  and  Morehead,"  and 
recalling  how  Washington  and  the  world  had  been  im- 
pressed by  the  Whig  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  Mr.  Badger, 
exclaimed  :  "Let  John  M.  Morehead  be  made  Vice-President, 
and  the  world  will  find  there  are  more  where  Mr.  Badger 
came  from."  The  Whig  State  Convention  of  7th  Decem- 
ber, 1843,  which  nominated  Clay  for  the  Presidency,  sent 
Dudley  and  Badger  to  the  National  Convention  and  nomi- 
nated Graham  for  Governor,  also  said :  "that  the  Executive 
Administration  by  his  Excellency,  John  M.  Morehead,  has 
been  marked  by  uniform  intelligence  and  dignity,  by  un- 
rivalled firmness  and  perfect  integrity:  And  this  Conven- 
tion, upon  a  review  thereof,  cannot  forbear  to  express  their 
high  gratification  that  the  Whig  party  has  furnished  to 
North  Carolina  such  a  Governor."  Upon  invitation,  the 
Convention  was  entertained  at  "Government  House"  in  the 
evening  by  Governor  and  Mrs.  Morehead. 

During  the  spring  of  1844  when  the  Whigs  of  North 
Carolina  were  looking  forward  to  a  visit  from  Henry  Clay, 
still  more  suggestions  of  Governor  Morehead  for  Vice-Presi- 
dential candidate  were  made.  In  the  Register  for  February 
9th,  "A  Whig  of  the  West"  says  he  has  heard  of  but  one 
name  for  that  office ;  "But  we  have  an  individual  of  our  own 
state,  who  would  not  only  do  the  citizens  of  the  Old  North 
State  great  honor,  but  the  American  people  generally — I 
allude  to  His  Excellency,  John  M.  Morehead.  He  is  natur- 
ally, a  great,  and,  I  may  say,  a  good  man ;"  and  he  shows 
what  need  had  been  shown  for  a  strong  man  as  Vice- 
President.  North  Carolina  should  have  the  place  and 
"Clay  and   Morehead"  would  sweep  the  land.     He  urged 


268  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the  delegates  to  see  to  it.  On  the  27th  still  another,  sug- 
gested by  the  former,  made  a  plea :  "I  have  known  Gov. 
Morehead  ever  since  he  -wzs  a  collegian,  and  as  your  corre- 
spondent justly  remarks,  he  is  a  great  and  good  man;  and  I 
can  say  with  all  sincerity,  I  have  never  met  his  superior. 
Take  him  altogether,  he  is  one  of  Nature's  noblest  sons ;  no 
man  has  a  greater  reputation  among  his  acquaintances  for 
native  intellect."     He  then  compared  him  to  Gen.  Harrison. 

While  these  events  were  in  progress  a  school  for  the 
Deaf  and  Dumb  was  opened  in  Raleigh  in  May,  1845, 
through  the  efforts  of  Governor  Morehead,  who  had  said  on 
November  4th,  previously:  "Impressed  with  a  desire  that 
something  should  be  done  for  the  afflicted  children  of  Provi- 
dence, I  directed  the  attention  of  the  last  Legislature  to  the 
subject,  but  had  the  mortification  to  see  the  recommendation 
wholly  disregarded."  This  was  in  a  letter  in  regard  to  an 
offer  of  William  D.  Cooke  of  Staunton,  Virginia,  to  under- 
take a  school  for  Deaf  and  Dumb  if  encouraged,  since  he 
had  observed  that  the  census  gave  North  Carolina  as  having 
82  deaf  mutes  under  14  years  of  age,  80  between  14  and  25, 
and  118  above  25.  It  finally  resulted  in  the  establishment 
of  one  in  Raleigh.  Mr.  Cooke's  results  on  a  deaf  mute  of 
Greensboro,  Daniel  Albright,  had  great  influence  in  his 
success.  The  school  opened  in  Raleigh  the  following  May. 
This  was  due  to  an  appropriation  of  the  late  Assembly  of 
$5000  a  year  from  the  School  Fund  for  the  education  of 
the  deaf,  dumb  and  blind,  and  provision  for  county  tax  of 
$75  a  pupil.^ 

The  great  event  of  the  spring  of  1844  was  the  visit  of 
Henry  Clay  to  North  Carolina's  capital  on  his  own  birthday, 
April  12th.  Ten  to  fifteen  thousand  Whigs  received  him — 
it  even  surpassed  the  Convention  scenes  of  1840.  He  was 
the  guest  of  Governor  Morehead  at  the  executive  mansion 
at  the  foot  of  Fayetteville  street  on  the  night  before,  and 
with  a  great  procession  headed  by  an  open  landau,  drawn  by 
four  gray  horses,   in  which   were   the   Governor   and  his 


'^  In  1843  Governor  Morehead  had  offered  Mr.  Cooke  a  large  tavern  house 
and  out-houses  at  Leaksville  for  such  a  school,  offering  it  free  the  first  year  and 
at  a  very  moderate  rental  afterwards. 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED         269 

famous  guest,  he  was  introduced  at  the  capitol  grounds  and 
made  a  great  speech.  After  he  was  presented  with  a  silk 
vest  made  by  a  Granville  young  lady,  the  barbecue  was  an- 
nounced. Speeches  fell  upon  Raleigh's  multitude  like  leaves 
of  Vallombrosa,  and  cheers  were  elicited  for  "Clay,  More- 
head  and  Graham,"  as  though  that  were  the  next  ticket  to 
be  voted  for.  But  when  the  National  Whig  Convention  met 
in  Baltimore  on  May  1st,  it  was  from  Mr.  Van  Buren's 
state  that  a  Vice-Presidential  candidate  was  taken,  Theo- 
dore Frelinghuysen.  To  face  these  the  Democrats  again 
went  to  Tennessee  and  secured  James  K.  Polk,  and  chose  a 
Pennsylvanian,  George  M.  Dallas,  for  second  place.  But 
the  annual  elections  in  the  "Old  North  State"  showed  that 
the  Whigs  had  learned  a  lesson,  namely :  "Get  out  and 
vote!"  For,  while  they  gave  Graham  but  3441  majority — 
over  a  1000  less  than  they  gave  Alorehead  the  second  time 
and  over  4500  less  than  the  first  time,  still  they  not  only 
elected  a  Whig  Executive  but  a  Whig  Senate  with  2  ma- 
jority and  a  22  majority  in  a  Whig  House.  Surely  North 
Carolina  was  the  Whig  state,  par  excellence!'^  And  Gov- 
ernor Morehead  was  to  have  a  Whig  Assembly  of  his  own 
after  all !  And  the  totals  were  scarcely  all  in  on  September 
9th,  when  Death,  to  show  that  he  was  no  respecter  of  parties, 
claimed  the  defeated  Democratic  gubernatorial  candidate. 
Col.  IMichael  Hoke !  The  prestige  of  North  Carolina  rose 
over  the  United  States  even  more,  if  possible,  than  under 
the  victories  of  Morehead.  Naturally,  in  November,  she 
went  for  Clay  even  more  vigorously,  but — in  vain !  Still — 
the  new  President,  James  K.  Polk,  was  a  son  of  North 
Carolina,  not  only  by  birth,  but  by  education,  and  was  not 
only  a  fellow-student  at  the  University  with  Governor 
Morehead,  but  while  the  latter  was  one  of  its  instructors. 
North  Carolina  was  mother  of  at  least  two  Presidents. 


^  North  Carolina  was  the  only  southern  state  to  cast  her  electoral  vote  for 
Henry  Clay.  The  Abolition  vote  of  about  60,000  was  taken  from  the  Whigs; 
and  if  it  had  not  been,  it  would  make  enough  to  elect  Clay,  so  far  as  popular 
vote  is  concerned.  So  that  the  Whigs  lost  through  the  Abolitionists,  and  the 
Democrats  did  not  really  gain.  President  Polk  was  a  minority  executive,  owing 
his  election  to  the  Abolitionist  defection.  There  was  also  a  Whig  Senate. 
There  were  twelve  Whig  Governors:  Georgia,  Tennessee,  North  Carolina,  Ken- 
tucky, Ohio,  Delaware,  Maryland,  New  Jersey,  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island, 
Massachusetts  and   Vermont;    but   there   were   fourteen   Democratic   ones. 


270  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

This  event  occurred  at  almost  the   same  time  as  the 
meeting  of  the  new  Whig  Assembly,  and  as  Governor  More- 
head's   previous   message,    containing   his    ideas,   has    been 
presented  in  full,  the  present  one  need  be  merely  outlined. 
As  to  the  finances,  he  objected  to  the  habit  of  falling  back  on 
the  common  school  fund  for  aid,  and  measures  should  be 
taken  to  prevent  it.     In  dealing  with  the  railroad  debts,  he 
drew  attention  to  the  purchase  of  mortgage  on  the  Ports- 
mouth road,  now  in  the  courts  with  some  of  its  tracks  torn 
up,  and  noted  the  possibility  of  that  course  with  the  Raleigh 
&  Gaston  road.     He  felt  that  what  the  roads  needed  was 
more  business,  which  could  be  met  by  a  connection  of  the 
latter  with  the  Wilmington  at  Weldon  by  a  road  about  a 
dozen  miles  long,  which  he  had  urged  before ;  and  the  various 
internal  improvements  he  had  urged,  especially  a  system  of 
locks  at  falls  and  ship  canals  at  Nag's  Head  and  Beaufort 
Harbor.    He  proposed  an  Agricultural  professorship  or  else 
a  school  and  model  farm ;  also  proposed  surveys :  geological, 
mineralogical  and  agricultural,  with  a  department  of  sta- 
tistics.   He  noted  that  only  Edgecombe  and  Rowan  counties 
had  not  adopted  the  common  school  system  provided,  and 
proposed   a   state   superintendent   and   better   organization. 
Again  he  urged  asylums  or  schools   for  the  deaf,  dumb, 
blind  and  insane  or  defective ;  and  likewise  a  penitentiary 
and  revision  of  the  criminal  code.    Again  also  he  urged  more 
copying  of  North  Carolina  material  in  British  archives.'     He 
suggested  an  enclosure  for  the  new  capitol  grounds;  and 
noting  the  fact  that  no  swamp  lands  had  been  sold,  said  it 
was  because  of  the  national  financial  depression,  and  that 
they  were  growing  in  value.    He  touched  upon  free  trade  as 
a  "humbug"  and  said  a  tariff  was  settled  national  policy; 
and  again  expressed  his  belief  that  the  national  land  fund 
should   be   distributed.      In   closing  he   expressed   his   only 
regret,  since  his  term  would  soon  end,  namely,  that  the  leg- 
islative department  "did  not  assign  to  me,  during  my  admin- 
istration, the  execution  of  some  work  of  great  and  per- 


1  On  December  21,  1844,  he  asked  that  the  executive  office  might  take  meas- 
ures to  collect  and  preserve  legislative  documents  of  the  revolution  and  it  was 
granted,  and  his  successor  at  once  took  it  up  vigorously. 


GOVERNOR  AND  RAILWAYS— CONTINUED  271 

manent  public  utility,  whereby,  in  the  faithful  and  zealous 
performance  of  the  duty,  I  might  manifest  to  the  people  of 
North  Carolina,  the  profound  gratitude  which  I  feel  to  them 
for  the  confidence  they  have  reposed  in  me,  and  for  the 
kindness  with  which  my  official  acts  have  been  received  by 
them." 

The  Whig  Assembly  only  sat  52  days,  adjourning  on 
January  6,  1844,  just  five  days  after  Governor  Morehead 
was  succeeded  by  the  new  executive.  The  same  editor  who 
almost  consigned  the  former  Whig  Assembly  to  perdition, 
praised  this  as  the  most  arduous  and  laborious  legislature 
he  had  ever  known.  He  considered  the  most  important 
measures  to  be  :  1.  The  act  to  prevent  imprisonment  of  hon- 
est debtors;  2.  The  one  in  favor  of  poor  debtors;  3.  Au- 
thorization of  foreclosure  of  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston  Railroad 
for  reorganization ;  4.  Popular  vote  on  building  a  peniten- 
tiary; 5.  Surveys  for  a  turnpike  west  from  Raleigh  and 
Fayetteville  to  the  Georgia  line  ;^  6.  Making  Sheriffs  and 
Constables  liable  for  debts  uncollected  through  lack  of  dili- 
gence ;  7.  Consolidation  of  Common  School  code ;  8.  Ap- 
propriation and  tax  provision  for  relief  and  education  of 
Deaf,  Dumb  and  Blind ;-  9.  To  prevent  fraudulent  voting ; 
and  10.  For  more  speedy  administration  of  justice.  The 
amount  of  humanitarian  and  educational  measures  is  most 
striking ;  while  the  survey  of  a  western  road  was  a  first  step 
in  what  was  to  prove  probably  his  greatest  life  work. 

Governor  Morehead  and  his  family  awakened  public 
pride  in  and  affection  for  them.  Farewells  began  as  early 
as  December  7th,  when,  in  the  evening,  Stith's  Cavalry 
Corps  arrived  at  the  executive  mansion  at  the  foot  of  Fay- 
etteville street  for  that  purpose,  whereupon  he  gave  them  a 
military  order  to  dismount  and  attack  his  refreshments.  The 
Raleigh  Guards  came  in  the  afternoon  a  week  later  on  the 
same  errand  and  with  like  results.  It  was  on  that  evening 
that  Governor  Morehead  presided  at  an  exhibition  of  results 
accomplished  in  deaf,  dumb  and  blind  students  which  influ- 
enced the  appropriation  that  made  a  school  possible.    It  was 


^  He  came  near  getting  the  turnpike  itself. 

*  Guilford,  the  Governor's  county,  was  the  first  to  vote  a  tax  for  it 


272  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

on  New  Year's  Eve,  however,  that  a  unique  farewell  dinner 
was  given  him  and  his  family  by  the  members  of  the  As- 
sembly, in  which  all  party  differences  were  forgotten.  This 
was  the  eve  before  their  departure  and  Editor  Gales  voiced 
public  sentiment  when  he  said  a  few  days  later:  "They 
came  amongst  us  four  years  ago,  strangers — they  depart, 
bearing  with  them  the  deep  regrets  and  cordial  good  wishes 
of  the  entire  population.'" 


1  A  playful  pretty  incident  was  part  of  the  welcome  of  Henry  Clay  at  the 
Executive  Mansion,  mentioned  on  page  268:  When  they  reached  the  recep- 
tion room,  Governor  Morehead  placed  his  four-year-old,  red-headed  son,  James 
Turner  Morehead,  in  his  pink  silk  dress,  upon  the  table,  and  the  child  pro- 
nounced the  welcome  to  the  famous  Kentuckian  and  said  he  would  be  the  next 
President,  proving  that  the  bump  of  prophecy  is  not  fully  developed  at  that 
tender  age! 


XII 

A 

National  Whig  Leader 

A  Presidential  Possibility 

and 

President  of  the  National  Whig  Convention 

Philadelphia 

1845 

"The  passing  from  office  of  such  a  man  as  Governor 
Morehead,"  said  the  editor  of  The  Fayetteville  Observer  in 
a  letter  of  January  1,  1845,  "might  be  deeply  regretted,  if 
we  did  not  feel  that  he  is  succeeded  by  one  altogether  worthy 
of  the  high  honor,  and  that  he  himself  cannot  be  permitted  to 
remain  in  retirement,  so  long  as  eminent  talents  and  unsul- 
lied public  and  private  character  continue  to  be  appreciated 
in  this  good  old  state.  There  are  few  such  men  in  the  United 
States  as  John  M.  Morehead,  and  none  better  calculated  to 
command  respect  and  to  win  esteem.  I  hope  to  see  him 
adorn  a  higher  station  than  that  from  which  he  now  retires 
with  so  well  deserved  a  reputation." 

The  Hillsboro  Recorder  said:  "Governor  Morehead  re- 
tires from  his  post,  having  lost  nothing  of  the  respect  and 
esteem  of  those  who  placed  him  there.  He  has  served  out 
the  time  limited  by  the  constitution,  with  a  faithfulness  and 
ability  worthy  of  all  commendation ;  and  he  will  carry  with 
him  in  his  retirement  the  best  wishes  of  his  constituents. 
May  he  have  a  long  life  of  happiness,  prosperity  and  useful- 
ness." This  Hillsboro  emphasis  on  his  retirement,  however, 
came  from  Governor  Graham's  home,  and  while  these  two 
splendid  Whigs  were  so  different  as  hardly  to  be  compar- 
able, they  were  liable  to  be  so  close  together  in  Whig  opera- 

273 


274  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

tions  as  to  be  objects  of  a  choice  between  them.  Hence  the 
Hillsboro  editor's  more  easy  acceptance  of  the  idea  of  the 
Ex-Governor's    retirement   than    that    of    the    Fayetteville 

editor. 

After  some  visiting,  Governor  Morehead  returned  to  his 
old  home,  "Blandwood,"  in  Greensboro,  on  January  9,  1845, 
and  that  was  made  a  gala  day.     They  were  met  by  the 
Greensboro  Guards  and  officials  and  proceeded  to  the  east 
front  of  the  old  Court  House,  where  he  was  officially  re- 
ceived.   The  Governor  spoke  feelingly  of  his  experiences  and 
at  length.    'T  have  returned  among  you,  my  fellow-citizens, 
of  Greensboro  and  Guilford,  with  a  bosom  thrilling  under 
emotions  of  inexpressible  pleasure.     I  am  among  my  early 
friends  and  shall  in  all  probability  spend  here  the  remainder 
of  my  days.     I  love  old  Guilford.     Why  should  I  not  love 
this  beautiful  and  pleasant  spot,  consecrated  to  my  heart 
with  the  most  cherished  reminiscences  of  my  life?    It  is  the 
birthplace  of  my  wife — the  birthplace  of  my  children — the 
scene  of  my  early  public  efforts — the  place  where  my  re- 
mains will  repose  when  it  shall  please  the  Almighty  to  call 
me  hence.    And  what  do  I  owe  to  you,  my  neighbors  and 
fellow-citizens — you  who  have  so  often  endorsed  me  to  the 
State  and  to  the  world  with  a  cordial  unanimity  almost  un- 
exampled in  the  annals  of  free  elections?     The  position  of 
Guilford  is  an  enviable  one.     Let  her  ever  maintain  that 
proud  position  which  she  has  achieved  in  the  scale  of  intel- 
ligence, and  the  good  influence  of  her  moral  and  steady 
habits.     Let  us  still  join  and  continue  our  efforts  to  spread 
intelligence,  morality  and  religion  among  all  people;  and 
never  cease  while  anything  good  is  left  for  us  to  perform."^ 
And  he  came  home  in  the  spirit  of  a  Cincinnatus,  for  he  who 
served  the  commonwealth  now  served  as  presiding  Judge  of 
Guilford  County  Court,  in  which  capacity  one  of  the  char- 
acteristic things  he  did  was  to  build  a  humane  Poor  House, 
whose  humane  features  secured  for  it  among  opponents  of 
it  the  epithet  ''Morehead's  Folly,"  just  as  his  Democratic 
opponents  were  driven  to  the  desperate  expedient  of  chang- 

^  Patriot,  Jan.  11,  1845. 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  275 

ing  his  name  to  "John  Moonshine  Morehead."  "Such  is  the 
excellence  of  our  institutions,"  said  Editor  Swaim  of  The 
Patriot  in  reference  to  it,  "no  matter  what  honors  a  man 
may  have  acquired,  they  are  not  detracted  from,  but  rather 
increased,  by  being  useful  in  any  station." 

The  Whigs  of  Montgomery  county  were  not  inclined  to 
allow  him  to  retire  and  nominate  him  for  Congress.  "We 
have  no  idea  that  the  Governor  will  accept,"  said  the 
Raleigh  Register,  "but  if  he  would,  what  a  leader  the  Whigs 
could  boast  of  in  the  lower  House!"  Other  counties  took 
it  up  with  such  seriousness,  that  on  May  5,  1845,  Governor 
Morehead  felt  compelled  to  address  a  letter  to  the  Ashe- 
borough  Convention,  in  which  after  he  expresses  his  grati- 
tude for  their  confidence,  he  adds :  "But  after  an  absence  of 
so  great  a  length  of  time  from  my  private  and  complicated 
afTairs,  devoted  wholly  to  the  public  service,  I  find  it  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  devote  a  portion  of  my  time  and  services 
to  the  regulation  of  my  private  affairs.  And  I  feel  confident 
that  I  have  no  friend  who  would  not  willingly  excuse  me 
from  this  service,  if  he  were  aware  of  the  sacrifice  that  I 
should  necessarily  suffer,  if  I  were  the  successful  candidate 
in  the  next  election." 

However,  he  presided  at  a  meeting  on  May  19th,  called 
to  condemn  the  Sub-Treasury  bill  just  passed  by  the  lower 
House  of  Congress  and  "spoke  of  the  existing  war  with 
Mexico,  condemning  most  unequivocally  the  President's  pol- 
icy in  bringing  on  the  war ;  but  none  would  be  more  ready  to 
sustain  the  President  than  himself,  in  prosecuting  this  war, 
now  that  we  had  gotten  into  it,  with  vigor  and  energy,  that 
it  might  be  brought  to  a  speedy  and  honorable  termination." 
He  eulogized  Webster  and  condemned  Webster's  enemies. 

Development  was  contagious  wherever  Governor  More- 
head  was :  In  May  a  new  High  School  was  opened  in 
Greensboro  with  forty-five  to  fifty  pupils,  and  the  Methodist 
Female  College  buildings  were  completed.  At  the  Univer- 
sity commencement  on  June  5th,  he  again  presided  at  the 
Alumni  Association  of  w^hich  he  had  been  chairman  or 
President  since  its  formation  on  May  31,  1843.  He  was  also 
chosen  to  deliver  its  address  in  1846,  which  was  described  as 


276  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

"a  fit  model  for  all  to  come  afterward."^  As  a  member  of 
the  Trustees  he  joined  in  conferring  the  degree  of  LL.D. 
"upon  the  just"  Whig,  late  President  of  the  Senate,  pro  tern., 
Mangum,  and  "the  unjust"  Democrats,  President  Polk  and 
Attorney  General  Mason,  the  latter  of  whom  had  been  his 
fellow-students  at  the  University. 

The  annexation  of  Texas  on  July  4,  1845,  was  looked 
upon  as  almost  certain  to  produce  war  with  Mexico,  and  the 
Whigs  expected  the  Democrats  to  repeal  the  Tariff,  pass  the 
Sub-Treasury  bill — all  of  which  made  financiers  and  po- 
litical leaders  apprehensive.  Governor  Morehead  came  to 
Raleigh  on  January  5,  1846,  to  attend  the  stockholders'  meet- 
ing of  the  Bank  of  North  Carolina,  whose  President,  Judge 
Cameron,  was  seeking  to  resign.  Governor  Morehead  took 
the  lead  in  expressing  warnings  as  to  probable  financial  con- 
ditions of  the  banks  of  the  land ;  and  now  as  the  Bank  of 
North  Carolina  was  so  ably  managed  and  so  prosperous,  let 
it  be  kept  so  by  relieving  President  Cameron  of  non-essential 
duties  in  order  that  he  might  be  retained.  His  ideas  were 
adopted  and  Governor  Graham,  himself  and  Judge  Settle 
were  made  a  committee  to  confer  with  the  President  and 
convince  him — which  they  did — and  the  bank  continued  its 
prosperous  career. 

A  few  days  later,  on  January  12th,  the  Whig  State  Con- 
vention at  Raleigh  re-nominated  Governor  Graham,  and  one 
of  the  interesting  speeches  was  by  Hon.  Edward  Stanly: 
"In  1840,"  said  he,  "they  [Democrats]  placed  in  the  field  a 
man  of  talents — well  and  favorably  known  in  every  portion 
of  the  State — to  oppose  our  own  noble-hearted  Morehead. 
After  a  thorough  canvass,  he  was  found  in  a  minority  of 
about  8000  votes.  In  1842,  they  selected,  to  oppose  the 
incumbent,  a  gentleman  distinguished  for  his  great  powers 
of  imagination  and  for  his  fluent  declamation,  and  he  was 
informed  by  some  5000  of  these  'Sheep-stealing  Whigs'  that 
he  could  not  be  allowed  to  'organize  and  convene'  himself 
into  the  gubernatorial  chair."  He  then  referred  to  the  cam- 
paign of  1844  when  their  candidate  was  beaten  by  over  3000 

'  Battle's  History  of  the  University  gives  no  further  information  as  to 
when  he  ceased  to  be  President  of  the  Alumni  Association. 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  277 

votes.  Governor  Morehead's  brother,  Senator  James  Turner 
Morehead,  was  active  in  this  convention,  but  he  himself  was 
not  present. 

His  proposals  for  a  penitentiary  were  the  chief  subject 
of  newspaper  epistolary  discussion  during  the  winter  of 
1845-6,  nearly  all  of  it  favorable.  And  the  results  of  his 
Deaf,  Dumb  and  Blind  school  were  heralded  and  praised  in 
scarcely  less  degree.  Governor  Graham  being  one  of  those 
who  made  an  address  on  the  subject.  Another  feature  was 
the  sale  and  re-organization  of  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston  and 
Portsmouth  railroads  and  the  comparative  prosperity  of  the 
Wilmington  road.  There  was  at  this  time  in  the  United 
States  3787  miles  of  railroad,  which  cost  $113,208,367.  The 
longest  was  the  "Central  "  [Georgia]  with  190  mles ;  the  next 
the  Baltimore  &  Ohio  with  188  miles ;  next  the  Wilmington 
&  Raleigh  [Weldon]  with  161  miles ;  next  the  Western  of 
Massachusetts  with  156  miles — the  shortest  being  the  West 
Stockbridge  [Alass.]  with  but  3  miles.  The  most  costly  one 
was  the  Philadelphia  &  Reading,  with  but  94  miles,  costing 
$9,457,570.  Next  to  these  came  the  Western  and  B.  &  O. 
roads.  Of  these  roads,  the  North  Carolina  railroads 
totalled  245|  miles  at  a  total  cost  of  $3,160,000 — a  most 
reasonable  cost  compared  with  any  of  the  rest — not  counting 
the  few  miles  of  the  Petersburg  &  Roanoke,  Greenville  & 
Roanoke,  and  the  Portsmouth  &  Roanoke  on  North  Carolina 
territory  to  reach  the  Roanoke  river.  The  campaign  di- 
vided the  interest  of  the  state  during  the  summer  of  1846 
with  the  call  on  North  Carolina  for  a  regiment  of  infantry 
for  the  Mexican  war,  and  the  news  of  progress  of  that 
conflict. 

From  public  expressions  so  far  away  as  Raleigh,  Edge- 
worth  Seminary  was  making  excellent  strides  in  develop- 
ment. It  inspired  one  of  the  examining  board  to  write  of  its 
excellence,  especially  in  the  higher  branches  of  Latin, 
Algebra,  Geometry,  Mental  Philosophy,  Evidences  of  Chris- 
tianity and  other  subjects.  At  the  same  time,  the  first  week 
in  June,  Governor  Morehead  was  at  the  University  Com- 
mencement, as  a  Trustee  and  President  of  the  Alumni  Asso- 
ciation, before  whom  he  gave  the  annual  address,  of  which 


278  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

one  editor  said :  "We  happen  to  know,  that,  four  days  be- 
fore the  dehvery  of  this  address,  pen  had  not  been  put  upon 
paper,  in  relation  to  its  subject  matter.  And  yet,  for  useful 
information,  graphic  delineation,  highly  seasoned  wit  and 
humor,  it  has  not  been  our  lot  to  witness  a  happier  effort. 
The  Governor  ought  to  adopt  as  the  motto  on  his  shield : 
'Semper  Paratiis." 

The  August  elections  and  the  old  Whig  general,  "Rough 
and  Ready"  Taylor's  victories  in  Mexico  restored  Whig 
prestige  with  a  vengeance!  Governor  Graham,  a  Whig 
Senate  and  a  Whig  House  by  large  majorities  won  in  North 
Carolina,  which  meant  two  new  Whig  national  Senators. 
Thereupon  the  west  began  to  make  a  demand  for  Governor 
IMorehead  for  the  United  States  Senate,  and  the  eastern 
Whigs  wanted  Edward  Stanly;  others  wanted  Badger  or 
Osborne.  The  Raleigh  Register  said  Morehead  was  the 
North  Carolina  "Rough  and  Ready."  When  November 
arrived  and  the  Assembly  had  made  Stanly  speaker  of  the 
lower  House  and  Senator  Mangum  was  willing  to  accept  re- 
election, Ex-Secretary  of  the  Navy  Badger  was  rewarded 
for  his  resignation  in  protest  against  President  Tyler  and 
sent  to  the  Senate.  Later  Mr.  Stanly  was  elected  Attorney 
General  of  the  State.  The  Whig  victory  did  not  carry 
Governor  Morehead's  penitentiary  proposal,  however. 

This  political  situation  was  accompanied  by  a  movement 
to  extend  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston  line  southward  through 
Fayetteville  to  Camden,  South  Carolina.  The  Post  Office 
department  had  diverted  the  big  mail  of  the  state  from  the 
Wilmington  route  to  the  Raleigh  line  and  Fayetteville  had 
long  been  determined  on  this  road.  A  Railroad  Convention 
was  therefore  set  for  November  4,  1846,  and  wide-spread 
interest  was  shown  in  it  even  outside  the  state.  This  body 
recommended  the  building  of  the  road  as  the  metropolitan 
north  and  south  line ;  that  it  is  feasible  and  attractive  to 
capitalists ;  asked  the  legislature  to  charter  the  North  Caro- 
lina section  of  it ;  appointed  a  preliminary  committee  to 
canvass  cost  and  the  like. 

On  Governor  Graham's  organization  of  his  second  term 
early  in  1847,  he  did  as  his  predecessor  had  done  before  him, 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  279 

placed  his  own  predecessor  at  the  head,  next  himself,  of  the 
Literary  Board,  as  the  Common  School  board  was  called; 
Governor  Morehead,  Charles  Manly  and  Editor  Weston  R. 
Gales  constituting  this  body.  This  was  in  March,  1847,  and 
at  once  a  sale  of  Swamp  Lands  was  ordered  for  May  20th 
to  the  amount  of  50,000  acres.  On  April  13th,  a  meeting 
was  held  at  the  Yarborough  Hotel,  Raleigh,  to  arrange  to 
secure  an  office  or  "station"  there  on  the  new  "Magnetic 
Telegraph"  line  ;  and  it  was  at  this  time  that  Governor  More- 
head's  board  decided  to  build  the  Deaf  and  Dumb  School  on 
Moore's  Square,  Raleigh,  while  the  streets  resounded  and 
sparkled  with  the  celebration  of  Taylor's  victories  at  Vera 
Cruz  and  Buena  Vista,  in  which  the  people  called  for  Taylor 
as  Presidential  candidate  in  1848.  This  sentiment  was  gen- 
eral :  Philadelphia  Whigs  nominated  him  in  town  meeting 
on  April  10th.  Then,  on  May  1st  [1847],  Mr.  Webster  and 
his  wife,  got  off  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston  train,  on  his  Southern 
tour  (but  not  as  Senator  Clay  had  done)  and  was  the  guest 
of  the  Governor  and  attended  Christ  Church  on  Sunday. 
Still  the  journey  of  such  a  Whig  giant  through  the  South  at 
this  time  might  easily  suggest  another  Presidential  candidate 
besides  the  hero  of  Buena  Vista.  And  while  Governor 
Morehead,  in  May,  was  at  the  sale  of  Swamp  Lands,  in 
which  they  sold  enough  land  to  open  a  road  into  the  vast 
tract,  from  Plymouth,  President  Polk  had  promoted  one  Col. 
Jefferson  Davis  of  Mississippi  to  be  a  Brigadier  General. 
But  this  was  hardly  over,  on  the  29th,  when  President  Polk 
and  his  suite  followed  Mr.  Webster  in  a  visit  to  Raleigh,  in 
this  case,  however,  to  attend  the  Commencement  of  his 
alma  mater  at  Chapel  Hill.  With  him  was  his  Secretary  of 
the  Navy,  John  Y.  Mason,  whom  Governor  Morehead,  as 
President  of  the  Alumni  Association,  introduced  as  the 
orator  of  the  day  before  that  body,  and  who  induced  that 
body  to  erect  a  monument  to  the  late  President  Caldwell,  the 
old  teacher  of  both  of  them.  President  Polk  had  appointed 
four  of  this  Association  as  ministers  to  France,  Spain, 
Portugal  and  Italy.  But  he  was  hardly  back  in  Washington 
before  North  Carolina  was  ablaze  with  Whig  Taylor  meet- 
ings, and  the  Whig  papers  were  publishing  a  letter  of  Gen- 


280  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

eral  Jefferson  Davis,  in  praise  of  the  great  hero  of  the  Mexi- 
can war,  and  northern  Democrats  were  intimating  that  North 
CaroHna's  Whig  Governor  had  not  been  as  cordial  to  the 
Democratic  President  as  he  should  have  been,  because  he 
had  Webster  at  the  mansion  at  the  foot  of  Fayetteville 
street  and  did  not  have  the  President  as  his  guest  also — 
which  appeared  to  be  true.  Thus  does  the  loom  of  events 
weave  so  strange  a  tapestry!  North  Carolina  seemed  to 
be  an  unusually  beautiful  belle  to  attract  such  distinguished 
political  admirers. 

And  then  just  as  the  state  election  was  occuring  in  Au- 
gust, the  first  telegraph  poles,  or  "posts,"  as  the  press  then 
called  them,  had  been  set  up  as  far  as  Raleigh  and  the  wires 
were  rapidly  being  hung.  And  the  news  said  that  six  out  of 
nine  North  Carolina  Congressmen  were  Whigs — reversing 
the  current  number  there!  And  this  was  typical  of  the 
whole  lower  House  of  Congress,  now  returned  to  the  Whigs. 
As  a  consequence  the  Democrats  were  at  sea,  with  a  half- 
dozen  candidates  to  succeed  President  Polk  and  the  Whigs 
were  more  joyously  acclaiming  but  one,  with  every  new 
victory  in  Mexico,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  Henry  Clay, 
while  the  returns  were  coming  in,  concluded  to  visit  the  sea- 
shore at  Cape  May,  but  stopped  long  enough  in  Philadelphia 
to  receive  what  amounted  to  a  national  demonstration.  Then 
came  James  Buchanan's  letter  saying  that  the  Wilmot  Pro- 
viso of  1820  saved  the  country,  therefore  let  its  line  be 
projected  from  the  Missouri  boundary  to  the  coast  in  1848 
and  again  save  the  country — and  it  lifted  him  out  of  the 
dead  level  of  the  half-dozen  Democratic  candidates. 

During  this  autumn  the  people  of  Charlotte  were  taking 
measures  to  secure  a  railroad  into  South  Carolina,  while 
those  of  Richmond  and  Danville  were  seeking  to  construct 
one  between  those  two  places.  Aleanwhile  the  road  from 
Raleigh  southward  was  not  prospering  as  it  was  hoped,  but 
efforts  were  making  to  reorganize  the  Portsmouth  road  and 
get  it  in  successful  operation  again.  The  purchase  of  a  new 
locomotive  by  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston  road  as  well  as  news 
from  the  Wilmington  railway  indicated  that  these  roads  were 
succeeding.    The  Common  Schools  fund  Vv^as  growing  also, 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  281 

being  $101,775  in  1847,  the  largest  figure  yet  reached;  and 
at  this  time  there  appeared  a  novel,  Alamance,  from  the  pen 
of  a  talented  young  man  of  the  state  who  was  soon  to  fill  an 
office  recommended  by  Ex-Governor  Morehead,  as  head  of 
the  Common  School  system  of  the  State,  namely,  Calvin  H. 
Wiley,  a  native  of  Guilford  county  and  educated  there  and 
at  the  University. 

The  campaign  of  1848  was  officially  started  in  Washing- 
ton, D.  C,  by  Whig  members  of  Congress  on  the  evening  of 
January  27th  at  a  meeting  over  which  Senator  JMangum  of 
North  Carolina  presided,  and  it  was  determnied  to  hold  a 
Whig  National  Convention.  On  February  5th,  they  decided 
to  hold  it  in  Philadelphia  at  Independence  Hall  on  June  7th. 
Thereupon  the  North  Carolina  counties  began  to  elect  dele- 
gates to  the  State  Convention  to  be  held  in  Raleigh  on  Wash- 
ington's Birthday ;  and  it  was  notable  that  some  of  them, 
like  Rockingham  county,  the  old  home  of  Governor  More- 
head,  announced  themselves  for  Henry  Clay  instead  of  Gen- 
eral Taylor,  and  that  some,  like  Anson  county,  were  silent 
on  the  subject,  while  some  others,  like  McDowell  county, 
were  for  the  hero  of  Buena  \^ista.  When  the  State  Conven- 
tion met,  however,  and  had  nominated  Charles  Manly  for 
gubernatorial  candidate,  they  reported  resolutions  denounc- 
ing the  President  and  defending  General  Taylor  from  his 
attacks,  but,  leaving  the  ordinary  delegates  to  the  National 
Convention  to  be  chosen  by  districts,  named  Ex-Governor 
Morehead  and  Hon.  John  Kerr  of  Caswell  as  delegates-at- 
large  for  the  State,  without  naming  either  Clay  or  Taylor  as 
favorites.  The  choice  of  Governor  Morehead  to  lead  the 
delegation,  with  his  well-known  admiration  for  Henry  Clay, 
together  with  absence  of  choice  of  General  Taylor  was  evi- 
dence that  North  Carolina  would  make  a  stand  for  the  Ken- 
tucky statesman.  Governor  Morehead  was  not  a  member 
of  the  Raleigh  Convention.    Mr.  Kerr  was  a  Taylor  man. 

In  March  came  the  close  of  the  war  by  the  ratification  of 
the  Treaty,  and  General  Taylor  became  still  more  the  popu- 
lar hero;  while  during  the  same  month,  at  Harrisburg,  the 
Democratic  Convention  of  Pennsylvania  gave  their  favorite 
son,  James  Buchanan,  first  place  for  the  Presidency. 


282  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Early  in  June,  1848,  Governor  Morehead  began  prepara- 
tions for  his  trip  to  Philadelphia.     His  business  affairs  had 
prospered  and  wonderfully  developed  in  the  three  years  and 
a  half  since  he  left  the  Executive  Mansion  in  Raleigh.     His 
family  also  had  increased  by  one  more  son,  Eugene  Lindsay 
Morehead,  born  on  the  previous  September  16th  at  "Bland- 
wood,"  so  that  he  now  had  four  daughters  and  three  sons 
and  one  son-in-law,  William  R.  Walker,  a  planter  or 
Yadkin  river,  to  whom  his  eldest  daughter  was  marr!?.M  ^n 
May  31st,  just  before  his  departure  to  take  train  a* 
for  Washington  and  Philadelphia. 

Governor  Morehead  was  fifty-two  years  ^.^u  «t.-,j.  iU 
the  maturity  of  his  powers.  He  found  scenes  of  the  greatest 
enthusiasm  in  the  Quaker  City  on  the  days  before  the  con- 
vention assembled.  The  scene  on  the  evening  of  the  6th  of 
June  is  thus  described  in  the  Baltimor'  Patriot:  "The  scene 
yesterday  evening  in  Chestnut  Strc  ■  was  animating  beyond 
anything  we  have  ever  had  here  in  Philadelphia  since  the 
glorious  days  of  1776,  when,  from  Independence  Hall,  went 
forth  that  great  charter  of  American  liberty — the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence.  .  .  .  The  friends  of  General 
Taylor  met  in  Independence  Square  last  night.  The  large 
square  was  crowded  to  excess — not  less  than  twenty  thou- 
sand people  being  present.  The  enthusiasm  exceeded  evcii 
that  shown  in  1840." 

Instead  of  meeting  in  Independence  Hall,  which  was  far 
too  small  for  such  a  Convention,  they  gathered  in  the 
spacious  salon,  where  had  once  been  exhibited  the  celebrated 
Chinese  Museum,  at  Ninth  and  Sansom  streets,  northeast 
corner,  which  still  bore  that  name.  Here  the  Convention 
was  called  to  order  in  the  morning  of  the  7th  of  June,  at 
eleven  o'clock — and  a  temporary  organization  formed.  The 
committee  on  permanent  organization  was  chosen  and  at  the 
afternoon  session,  at  4  o'clock,  the  chairman  announced  as 
President  of  the  Convention,  Hon.  John  M.  Morehead,  of 
North  Carolina,  and  amid  vociferous  applause,  it  was  unani- 
mously confirmed.  Messrs.  King  of  Georgia  and  Fuller  of 
New  York  escorted  him  to  the  chair,  whereupon  Governor 
Morehead  addressed  the  Convention. 


&#<: 


-^        ! 


■  X 


.?'■ 


Chinese   Museum 

Nortlieast   curiier  of   Ninth   and   Sanson!   Sts.,   Philadelphia,   exterior  and    interior 

in  which   Governor  Morehead  presided  over  the   Whig  Convention 

in   June,    1848 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  283 

"The  following  is  the  address  deHvered  by  Gov.  Alore-  ' 

head,  on  taking  the  chair  as  President  of  the  late  Whig  Con-        / 
vention,  at  Philadelphia :'  / 

"Gentlemen  of  the  Convention : — I  do  not  possess  lan- 
guage adequate  to  express  to  you  my  grateful  feelings,  and 
to  return  to  you  my  profound  acknowledgments  for  the 
distinguished  honor  conferred  upon  me  by  selecting  me  to 
preside  over  the  deliberations  of  this  Convention.  If, 
Gentlemen,  I  possessed  qualifications,  either  by  experience 
or  otherwise,  for  the  distinguished  position — as  I  am  con- 
scious I  do  not — the  obligations  that  you  have  imposed 
upon  me  would  be  far  greater  than  they  would  deserve,  and 
therefore  do  I  consider  my  indebtedness  to  you,  at  this  time, 
still  larger. 

"The  purpose  for  which  you  have  assembled  here  from 
every  part  of  the  land,  uniting  in  common  counsel  and  de- 
liberation, is  that  of  bringing  relief  to  our  common  country, 
and  devising  and  executing  such  schemes  as  are  necessary  to 
her  prosperity  and  happiness.  Order,  wisdom  and  decorum 
should  characterize  our  deliberations,  and  so  sure  as  they  do, 
success  will  attend  them.     [Applause.] 

"We  should  yield,  fellow-citizens,  on  this  occasion,  all 
personal  preferences.  Let  us  bring  forward,  for  the  good  of 
our  common  country,  our  united  counsels  and  our  united  wis- 
dom. Let  us  rear  our  standard  with  the  full  determination 
to  carry  it  on  to  victory.  [Applause.]  All  we  have  to  do  is 
to  select  a  standard  bearer  who  will  secure  the  hearty  co- 
operation of  all  sections  of  our  country  in  the  common  cause 
of  our  country's  welfare.  Let  us  have  inscribed  upon  our 
banner  'the  prosperity  of  our  country.'     [Applause.] 

"It  has  been  asserted  that  'to  the  victors  belong  the 
spoils.'  Let  us  determine  that  we  will  be  victors  and  when 
victorious,  if  spoils  we  must  have,  let  them  be  the  redemp- 
tion of  our  country  from  her  present  embarrassed  condition, 
and  replenishing  her  exhausted  treasury,  and  restoring  her 
to  that  flourishing  and  happy  condition  from  which  she  had 
fallen.     Let  us  endeavor  to  spread  over  our  land  industry, 

^Greensboro  Patriot,  17th  June,  1848. 


284  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

peace  and  plenty,  which  shall  give  to  every  laborer  adequate 
employment  and  remunerating  wages — which  shall  cause 
every  sea  to  be  whitened  with  the  sails  of  our  commerce — 
which  shall  make  the  produce  of  our  teeming  fields  to  spread 
plenty  over  our  own  land,  enable  our  people  to  extend  to 
others  that  bounty  which  a  Providence  has  bestowed  upon 
us.     [Great  applause.] 

"Fellow-citizens — If  our  deliberations  are  conducted 
with  that  order  and  love  of  law  which  characterize  the  con- 
stituents who  sent  us  here,  we  shall  have  little  cause  to  fear 
for  our  essential  triumph.  [Applause.]  And  if  our  spoils 
be  such  as  I  have  described,  spoils  which  will  bring  pros- 
perity to  every  door,  and  cause  the  land  to  teem  with  the 
blessings  of  a  wise  legislation  and  well-directed  industry;  if, 
gentlemen,  the  results  of  your  deliberations  shall  be  to  re- 
store to  our  country  peace,  harmony  and  prosperity :  to 
restore  to  the  constitution  its  violated  rights  and  powers,  and 
to  restore  the  administration  of  the  laws  of  our  country  to 
its  pristine  purity,  if  such  should  be  the  effects  of  your  har- 
monious deliberations,  and  your  patriotic  counsels,  I  shall 
deem  it  the  proudest  legacy  that  I  can  bequeath  to  my 
posterity,  that  I  had  the  honor  to  preside  over  that  council 
of  sages  whose  deliberations  produced  these  happy  results." 
[Great  applause.] 

It  was  the  afternoon  session  of  the  8th  before  they  were 
ready  to  nominate,  and  the  old  Chinese  Museum  hall  re- 
sounded to  the  praises  of  General  Taylor  of  Louisiana, 
Henry  Clay  of  Kentucky,  John  M.  Clayton  of  Delaware, 
General  Winfield  Scott,  McLean  and  Webster.  The  first 
ballot  was  significant:  Taylor,  111;  Clay,  97;  Scott,  43; 
Webster,  22;  Clayton,  4;  and  McLean,  2.  On  the  second 
ballot,  the  Clayton  and  McLean  votes  and  eleven  Clay  votes 
increased  all  the  others,  Webster's  22  standing  solid,  so  that 
it  stood:  Taylor,  118;  Clay,  86;  Scott,  49;  and  Webster,  22. 
With  no  choice,  President  Morehead  announced  the  session 
adjourned  until  Friday  morning.  The  third  ballot  showed 
good  work  done  for  the  hero  of  Buena  Vista  during  the 
night  and  slight  gains  for  General  Scott,  but  loss  to  the  rest ; 
for  General  Taylor  received  133  and  Clay  74 — which  was  the 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  285 

signal  for  the  Clay  forces  to  scatter  to  the  two  military  com- 
manders, raising  General  Taylor's  vote  to  171 — thirty  more 
than  was  necessary  to  a  choice,  whereupon  President  More- 
head  announced  "in  a  clear  and  distinct  voice"  General 
Taylor  as  the  duly  elected  Whig  candidate  for  President  of 
the  United  States.  The  tremendous  applause  was  taken  up 
in  the  streets,  and  "By  means  of  that  astonishing  agent — the 
Magnetic  Telegraph" — said  the  Raleigh  Register  in  its  issue 
next  morning — "we  are  in  possession  of  the  leading  acts  of 
the  National  Whig  Convention  .  .  .  giving  us  informa- 
tion that  John  M.  Morehead — our  own  Morehead — had  been 
chosen  to  preside  over  the  Convention !  This  is  indeed  a 
compliment  deserved.  .  .  .  North  Carolina  .  .  . 
has  been  happily  denominated  the  Thermopylae  of  Whig 
principles — the  most  reliable  Whig  state  in  the  Union ;  and 
it  is  so.  .  .  .  The  very  moment  that  our  paper  was  being 
put  to  press  on  Friday  morning,  a  dispatch  was  received  at 
the  Telegraph  Office,  announcing  the  glorious  intelligence 
that  Gen.  Zachary  Taylor!  The  Hero  of  Buena  Vista, 
had  received  the  nomination  for  the  presidency  on  the  fourth 
balloting." 

After  nomination  for  the  Vice-Presidency,  President 
Morehead  directed  preparation  of  ballots,  and  as  Abbot 
Lawrence  of  Massachusetts  and  Millard  Fillmore  of  New 
York  were  far  ahead  of  the  rest  on  first  ballot,  a  second 
one  soon  selected  the  New  York  man  by  within  two  of  the 
same  number  of  votes  as  that  for  President,  and  the  objects 
of  the  Convention  were  achieved. 

After  the  motion  was  made  that  the  National  Whig  Con- 
vention of  1848  should  adjourn.  President  Morehead  said: 
"Gentlemen  of  the  Convention — Before  severing  the  tie 
which  has  here  united  us,  permit  me  to  return  my  profound 
thanks  for  your  kindness  and  forbearance.  Your  partiality 
placed  me  in  this  chair,  to  the  duties  of  which  I  am  unused 
and  unaccustomed — and  that  same  spirit  of  kindness  has 
sustained  me  in  their  performance.  If  I  have  committed 
mistakes  or  errors,  or  if  in  the  discharge  of  my  duties  here, 
I  have  caused  pain  to  any  individual,  I  have  only  to  say 
it  was  unintentional,  and  it  would  cause  me  serious  regret. 


286  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Let  us,  at  all  events,  carry  with  us  no  unkind  feelings,  and  I 
shall  feel  happy  in  the  impression  that  no  one  has  any  un- 
kind feeling  towards  me. 

"I,  too,  have  been  placed  here  in  a  peculiar  situation ;  and 
as  various  gentlemen,  of  different  delegations,  have  given 
expression  to  their  feelings,  I  trust  I  may  be  allowed  also 
to  say  a  few  words  before  we  part.  I,  too,  have  been  de- 
feated in  the  first  wish  of  my  heart;  I  have  not  succeeded  in 
the  nomination  of  my  favorite  candidate — I  stand  among 
the  vanquished  party — but  I  fall  into  the  h^nds  of  my  victor 
friends,  like  a  conquered  damsel  into  the  hands  of  her  lover, 
and  submit  kindly  to  my  defeat.^  [Loud  applause.]  I  shall 
enter  upon  the  campaign  in  the  true  Whig  spirit,  determined 
to  succeed,  and  if,  before  the  election  any  Whig  can  be 
found  who  will  outstrip  me  in  zeal,  I  hope  to  take  such  a 
Whig  by  the  hand,  on  the  fourth  of  next  March,  at  the  in- 
auguration of  Gen.  Zachary  Taylor. 

"It  has  on  a  former  occasion  been  my  bad  fortune  not  to 
have  my  first  choice  approved.  In  1840,  the  Whigs  of  North 
Carolina  unfurled  the  free  standard  of  Henry  Clay  in  that 
state,  and  sent  his  name  to  the  Harrisburg  Convention;  but 
the  Whigs  of  that  Convention,  the  representatives  of  the 
entire  Union,  sent  back  to  us  that  standard  inscribed  with 
another  name,  that  of  Wm.  Henry  Harrison — wholly  un- 
expected by  us.  But  I  only  looked  to  see  if  it  was  still  the 
True  Whig  Banner.  I  did  not  ask  myself  what  name  was  on 
it.  I  never  thought  of  inquiring  what  side  of  Mason  and 
Dixon's  line  the  nominee  was  from.  It  was  the  Whig 
Banner,  and  as  such  it  was  placed  in  my  hands.  For  five 
months  this  hand  bore  that  banner  through  North  Carolina, 
until  in  the  succeeding  August,  North  Carolina,  a  Slave  State, 
fired  the  first  guns  of  that  volley  which  shook  Democracy 
from  one  end  of  the  Nation  to  the  other.  Its  re-echoes 
resounded  from  State  to  State  throughout  the  entire  Union, 
until  the  great  triumph  was  achieved. 

^  Governor  Morehead  was  the  only  one  of  the  North  Carolina  delegation 
who  voted  for  Clay  on  every  ballot  Four  others  voted  for  Clay,  but  one  turned 
to  Scott  on  the  third  ballot  and  one  to  Taylor  on  the  fourth  one.  Six  were  for 
Taylor  from  the  tirst.  The  President  of  the  Convention,  therefore,  did  not 
vote  for  Taylor,  in  convention,  but  accepted  him,  and  worked  for  him.  One 
of  the  Taylor  men  was  Calvin  H.  Wiley.  This  situation  was  not  calculated  to 
make  President  Morehead  a  very  probable  Cabinet  possibility. 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  287 

"I  have  mentioned  this,  gentlemen,  for  the  benefit  of 
Ohio,  and  I  will  state  one  incident  from  which  the  Whigs 
of  that  State  may  hope  and  profit.  North  Carolina,  though 
■she  lost  the  nomination  of  her  first  choice,  Henry  Clay,  soon 
raised  on  every  hill  top  the  banner  of  Harrison.  In  one  loca- 
tion when  a  tall  pole  had  been  erected  with  the  name  of  Har- 
rison nailed  to  the  mast,  a  solitary  stranger  was  seen  riding 
past  it;  attracted  by  its  inscription  he  stopped,  elevated  his 
eye  and  seeing  the  Whig  principles  inscribed  thereon,  doffed 
his  beaver  and  saluted  them  with  three  solitary  cheers !  Nor 
do  I  despair  before  fall  that  in  Ohio  will  also  be  seen  solitary 
Whigs  cheering  the  banner  of  Zachary  Taylor. 

"I  have  supported  in  this  body  the  nomination  of  Henry 
Clay — that  most  illustrious  son  of  our  country — his  sun  is 
about  to  set — and  I  trust  his  latest  hours  may  be  gilded  and 
brightened  by  our  success,  which,  like  the  bow  of  promise, 
will  betoken  the  spread  of  peace  and  prosperity  around  our 
land.  I  have  voted  for  Henry  Clay  because  no  man  is  more 
largely  identified  with  the  glory  of  our  country  than  he  is. 
No  administration  could  add  a  particle  to  his  undying  fame ; 
no  honors  could  add  to  his  treasure  heap !  But  I  yield  him 
to  this  Convention ;  yield  him  cheerfully,  and  for  the  future, 
no  man  can  go  more  heartily  than  I  will  for  the  Hero  of 
Buena  Vista. 

"It  has  been  suggested  from  different  States  that  fears 
existed  of  the  result  of  this  nomination.  We  should  never 
fear  the  consequences  when  our  cause  is  good.  And  our 
cause  is  not  that  of  Zachary  Taylor,  but  of  the  Whigs  of  the 
Union.  Let  us  when  dangers  are  thickening  around  us 
take  our  cue  from  his  own  conduct  at  Buena  Vista,  when  he 
said:  'We  have  got  the  enemy  just  where  we  want  him; 
now  is  the  time  to  give  them  a  little  more  grape,  Capt. 
Bragg!'  As  our  leader  never  surrenders,  is  there  any  one  of 
his  followers  who  intends  to  surrender?  [an  emphatic  re- 
sponse of  'no']  then  if  we  all  pull  together  we  cannot  be 
vanquished. 

"Before  dissolving  this  body  allow  me  to  wish  prosperity 
and  happiness  to  you  all,  and  that  you  may  arrive  safely  to 
your  homes  and  friends  again.    I  bid  you  a  long  and  affec- 


288  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

tionate  farewell,  and  declare  this  Convention  adjourned 
sine  die/'^ 

That  night  a  ratification  meeting  was  held  on  Indepen- 
dence Square,  which  was  illuminated  like  day  with  Drum- 
mond  lights,  transparencies,  variegated  lamps  and  the  like, 
while,  it  is  said,  50,000  people  seethed  and  yelled  for  the 
Whig  candidates.  Four  platforms,  on  different  sides  of  the 
square  were  required,  the  main  one  being  next  to  the  Hall. 
The  Whig  Inquirer  editor  called  the  main  stand  to  order  at 
7  P.  M.  and,  after  brief  remarks,  introduced  President  John 
Motley  Morehead,  whose  inspiring  account  of  the  nomina- 
tion was  loudly  acclaimed,  and  at  mention  of  the  names  of 
Taylor  and  Fillmore  "the  shouts  which  went  up  were  like 
those  which,  Byron  says,  herald  in  'a  young  earthquake's 
birth'  " — to  quote  from  the  Baltimore  Patriot.  At  the  same 
moment  speeches  and  applause  at  the  other  three  stands 
were  rivalling  those  at  the  main  one  where  they  were  listen- 
ing to  President  Morehead. 

Immediately  on  the  next  morning  President  Morehead 
dispatched  to  General  Taylor  at  Baton  Rouge,  Louisiana,  the 
following  letter  of  notification,  dated  at  "Philadelphia,  June 
10,  1848:" 

"Gen.  Zachary  Taylor : 

"Dear  Sir :  At  a  Convention  of  the  Whigs  of  the  United 
States,  held  in  this  city  on  the  7th  instant,  and  continued 
from  day  to  day  until  the  9th,  you  were  nominated  as  a  can- 
didate for  the  Presidency  of  the  United  States,  at  the  en- 
suing Presidential  election. 

"By  a  resolution  of  said  Convention,  it  was  made  the 
duty  of  their  President  to  communicate  to  you  the  result  of 
their  deliberations,  and  request  your  acceptance  of  the 
nomination. 

"In  obedience  to  said  resolve,  I,  as  the  organ  therein 
designated,  have  the  honor  to  make  you  the  foregoing  com- 
munication and  to  ask  your  acceptance  of  the  nomination. 

"Permit  me,  dear  Sir,  to  indulge  the  hope  that  he  who 
never  shrinks  from  any  responsibility  nor  fails  to  discharge 

1  Greensboro  Patriot,  21st  June,  1848. 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  289 

any  duty  assigned  him  by  his  Government,  will  not  now  re- 
fuse this  enthusiastic  call  of  his  countrymen. 

"I  am,  dear  Sir,  with  sentiments  of  very  high  regard, 
your  most  obedient  servant, 

"J.  M.  Morehead, 
"President  of  the  Whig  National  Convention." 

To  Mr.  Fillmore,  on  the  same  day,  he  sent  the  following 
somewhat  similar  communication : 

"Dear  Sir:  At  a  Convention  of  the  Whigs  of  the  United 
States  assembled  in  this  city  on  the  7th  instant,  and  con- 
tinued by  adjournment  until  the  9th,  Gen.  Zachary  Taylor 
of  Louisiana,  was  nominated  as  a  candidate  for  the  Presi- 
dency, and  you  were  nominated  for  the  Vice-Presidency  of 
the  United  States,  at  the  next  ensuing  Presidential  election. 

"By  a  resolution  of  said  Convention  it  was  made  my  duty 
to  communicate  to  you  the  result  of  their  deliberations,  and 
to  request  your  acceptance  of  the  nomination. 

"I  have  the  honor  to  be,  dear  Sir,  your  most  obedient 
servant, 

"J.  M.  Morehead, 
"President  of  the  Whig  National  Convention. 
"Hon.  M.  Fillmore."^ 

As  Mr.  Fillmore  was  only  at  the  distance  of  Albany, 
New  York,  he  soon  received  his  letter,  paid  its  postage  as 
usual,  and  wrote  the  following  reply,  dated  seven  days  later, 
June  17th: 

"Sir:  I  have  the  honor  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of 
your  letter  of  the  10th  instant,  by  which  I  am  notified  that 
at  the  late  Whig  Convention  held  at  Philadelphia,  Gen. 
Zachary  Taylor  was  nominated  for  President  and  myself 
for  Vice-President,  and  requesting  my  acceptance  of  the 
nomination. 

"The  honor  of  being  thus  presented  by  the  distinguished 
representatives  of  the  Whig  party  of  the  Union  for  the 
second  office  in  the  gift  of  the  people — an  honor  as  unex- 
pected as  it  was  unsolicited — could  not  fail  to  awaken  in  a 

^  Greensboro  Patriot,  5th  Aug.,  184S. 


290  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

grateful  heart  emotions  which,  while  they  cannot  be  sup- 
pressed, find  not  appropriate  language  for  utterance. 

"Fully  persuaded  that  the  cause  in  which  we  are  enlisted 
is  the  cause  of  our  country;  that  our  chief  object  is  to  secure 
its  peace,  preserve  its  honor,  and  advance  its  prosperity ;  and 
feeling,  moreover,  a  confident  assurance  that,  in  Gen.  Taylor 
(whose  name  is  presented  for  the  first  office)  I  shall  always 
find  a  firm,  consistent  Whig,  a  safe  guide,  and  an  honest 
man,  I  cannot  hesitate  to  assume  any  position  which  my 
friends  may  assign  me. 

"Distrusting,  as  I  well  may,  my  ability  to  discharge  sat- 
isfactorily the  duties  of  that  high  office,  but  feeling  that,  in 
case  of  my  election,  I  may  with  safety  repose  on  the  friendly 
aid  of  my  fellow  Whigs,  and  that  efforts  guided  by  honest  in- 
tentions will  always  be  charitably  judged,  I  accept  the  nom- 
ination so  generously  tendered ;  and  I  do  this  the  more 
cheerfully,  as  I  am  willing  for  such  a  cause  and  with  such  a 
man,  to  take  my  chances  of  success  or  defeat  as  the  electors, 
the  final  arbitrators  of  our  fate,  shall,  in  their  wisdom,  judge 
best  for  the  interests  of  our  common  country. 

"Please  accept  the  assurances  of  my  high  regard  and 
esteem,  and  permit  me  to  subscribe  myself  your  friend  and 
fellow  citizen, 

"iMillard  Fillmore. 
"Hon.  J.  M.  Morehead."! 

The  delay  in  receiving  a  reply  from  General  Taylor  as  to 
his  reception  of  Governor  2^Iorehead's  notification  of  his 
nomination  led  the  latter  to  publish  on  July  18,  1848,  the  fol- 
lowing explanation,  in  the  Greensboro  Patriot  [20th  July  is- 
sue] :  "Editors  of  The  Greensboro  Patriot:  On  the  10th  of 
June,  as  President  of  the  Whig  National  Convention,  I  ad- 
dressed from  Philadelphia  to  Gen.  Zachary  Taylor  and  Hon. 
Millard  Fillmore  letters,  apprising  them  of  the  nominations 
by  that  Convention,  and  requesting  their  acceptance  of  the 

nominations. Having  received  no  reply  from  either  of  the 

gentlemen,  the  last  of  June  I  addressed  them  again,  and  en- 
closed copies  of  my  letters  of  10th  June.    On  the  3rd  July  I 

^  Greensboro  Patriot,  5th  Aug.,  1848. 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  291 

received  a  communication  from  Mr.  Fillmore,  dated  at 
Albany  17th  June,  which  has  been  forwarded  to  the  Na- 
tional Intelligencer  for  publication. From  General  Taylor 

I  have  received  no  communication,  and  I  see  by  a  New  Or- 
leans paper  that  as  late  as  5th  July  he  had  received  no 
communication  from  me.  On  yesterday  I  addressed  him 
again,  directly,  and  also  through  two  friends ;  so  that  it  is 
hoped  some  one  of  my  communications  will  reach  him.    His 

reply  shall  be  published  as  soon  as  received. Yours 

J.  M.  Morehead."! 

General  Taylor  finally  received  his  notification,  however, 
and  after  over  a  month,  on  July  15th  [1848]  he  penned  the 
following  reply  from  his  home  in  Baton  Rouge. 

"Sir :  I  have  had  the  honor  to  receive  your  communica- 
tion of  June  10th,  announcing  that  the  Whig  Convention 
which  assembled  at  Philadelphia  on  the  7th  of  that  month, 
and  of  which  you  were  the  presiding  officer,  have  nominated 
me  for  the  office  of  President  of  the  United  States. 

"Looking  to  the  composition  of  the  Convention,  and  its 
numerous  and  patriotic  constituency,  I  feel  deeply  grateful 
for  the  honor  it  has  bestowed  upon  me,  and  for  the  dis- 
tinguished confidence  implied  in  my  nomination  by  it  to  the 
highest  office  in  the  gift  of  the  American  people. 

"I  cordially  accept  that  nomination,  but  with  sincere  dis- 
trust of  my  fitness  to  fulfil  the  duties  of  an  office  which 
demands  for  its  exercise  the  most  exalted  ability  and  pa- 
triotism, and  which  has  been  rendered  illustrious  by  the 
greatest  names  in  our  history.  But  should  the  selection  of 
the  Whig  Convention  be  confirmed  by  the  people,  I  shall 
endeavor  so  to  discharge  the  new  duties  thus  devolving  upon 
me  as  to  meet  the  just  expectations  of  my  fellow  citizens  and 
preserve  undiminished  the  prosperity  and  reputation  of  our 
common  country. 

"I  have  the  honor  to  remain,  with  the  highest  respect, 
your  most  obedient  servant, 

"Hon.  J.  M.  Morehead,  "^-  Taylor. 

"Greensboro,  Guilford  Co.,  N.  C."- 

1  Dashes  inserted  by  the  present   writer  indicate   his  paragraphing. 
^  Greensboro  Patriot,  5th  Aug.,  1848. 


292  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

This  letter  reached  Governor  Morehead  in  time  to  appear 
first  in  the  Greensboro  Patriot  on  August  5th  and  in  other 
papers   simuhaneously.      No   explanation   accompanied   the 
pubhcation,  but  it  was  gradually  rumored  that  the  peculiar 
delay  was  due  to  the  postal  custom  of  that  day,  namely,  that 
the  person  to  whom  an  epistle  was  of  most  concern  and  value 
should  pay  the  postage,  be  he  sender  or  receiver;  and  that 
these  letters  were  of  most  concern  and  value  to  the  candi- 
dates, who  would  naturally  expect  to  pay  the  postage.    Mr. 
Fillmore  did  so  it  seems ;  but  the  blunt  soldier  of  the  Mexican 
War,  receiving  a  flood  of  correspondence  which  presumed 
his  great  interest  in  his  proposed  candidacy,  before  he  was 
nominated,  refused  to  accept  the  presumption  and  ordered  all 
un-prepaid  mail  sent  to  the  Dead  Letter  Office !    Apparently 
he  had  not  rescinded  this  order  when  Governor  Morehead's 
notification  of  June  10th  arrived  in  Louisiana;  and  it  jour- 
neyed on  its  way  to  the  place  where  all  dead  letters  go. 
Whether  General  Taylor  finally  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
this  letter  was  of  most  concern  to  him  and  paid  the  postage, 
whether  some  one  of  the  letters  reached  him  without  post- 
age, or  whether  Governor  Morehead  decided  that  this  notifi- 
cation letter  was  becoming  of  more  concern  to  him  than  to 
General  Taylor,  has  never  yet  been  discovered,  so  far  as  is 
known. 

But  whether  General  Taylor  knew  it  or  not,  the  whole 
United  States  knew  it  as  fast  as  telegraph  and  courier  could 
scatter  it,  with  the  usual  enthusiasm  for  a  military  hero  can- 
didate. President  Morehead  took  boat  to  Norfolk,  ar- 
riving on  the  13th,  and  while  at  the  City  Hotel,  a  deputation 
of  citizens  waited  on  him  and  asked  him  to  address  the  rati- 
fication meeting  that  evening,  which  he  did  amid  "thunders 
of  applause,"  to  quote  the  Norfolk  Herald.  By  Tuesday, 
the  20th  of  June,  President  Morehead  was  in  Raleigh,  where 
he  addressed  the  newly  organized  "Rough  and  Ready  Club" 
amid  the  usual  enthusiasm.  Governor  Morehead's  slogan: 
"The  Prosperity  of  Our  Country"  began  to  have  great 
vogue,  and  victory  in  State  and  Nation  was  destined  to  fol- 
low him.  The  August  election  for  Governor,  while  success- 
ful for  the  Whig  Candidate,  Charles  j\Ianly,  only  gave  him 


NATIONAL  WHIG  LEADER  293 

874  majority,  because  the  Democratic  candidate,  David 
Settle  Reid,  of  Governor  Morehead's  old  home  county,  Rock- 
ingham, advocated  a  revision  of  the  constitution  to  remove 
freehold  qualification  to  vote  for  State  senators.  This  was 
naturally  attractive  to  all  non-freeholders,  and  the  slogan 
"equal  suffrage"  was  a  most  effective  one.  It  is  said  this 
slogan  was  suggested  by  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  to  one  of  his 
relatives  in  that  region.  When  it  is  observed  that  this  874 
majority  for  Whig  Governor  Manly  rose  to  ten  times  that, 
of  8581,  majority  for  Taylor  over  Cass,  one  can  easily  see 
how  powerful  the  "Equal  Suffrage"  slogan  was  and  also 
how  thoroughly  Whig  was  "The  Old  North  State,"  the  Whig 
Thermopolae !  And  also  how  the  President  of  the  Whig 
National  Convention,  John  Motley  Morehead,  was  the  most 
powerful  Whig  in  North  Carolina  and  one  of  the  most 
powerful  in  the  United  States. 


XIII 
His  Campaign 

TO 

Unite  East  and  West  North  Carolina 

BY 

Railroad 
1849 

At  the  time  of  the  Whig  National  Convention  in  June, 
1848,  the  lately  increasing  interest  in  the  western  part  of  the 
state,  in  the  approach  of  railroads  from  Richmond  to  Dan- 
ville on  the  northern  border  and  a  South  Carolina  line  to 
Charlotte  near  the  southern  border,  with  the  magnificent 
possibility  of  another  cross-state  line  to  connect  them, 
thereby  completing  a  continental  line  from  Maine  to  Georgia 
— culminated  in  a  convention  at  Salisbury  in  Rowan  county, 
presided  over  by  David  F.  Caldwell.  It  was  determined, 
that  as  soon  as  the  roads  reached  the  two  places  mentioned, 
the  people  should  go  to  the  Legislature  for  a  charter.  Mr. 
Caldwell  was  the  leading  Guilford  representative  in  the 
House  of  Commons. 

This  movement  was  of  course  bound  to  alarm  the  east 
and  her  two  railroads,  for  they  knew  the  west  was  de- 
termined not  to  be  land-locked  much  longer.  The  Raleigh 
and  Gaston  road,  now  the  property  of  the  State,  it  will  be  re- 
called, had  long  been  used  to  base  a  projected  extension 
southward,  through  Fayetteville,  but  in  vain.  Now,  as  Gov- 
ernor Graham  saw  this  western  movement,  headed  by  Guil- 
ford county,  and  undoubtedly  supported  by  Ex-Governor 
Morehead,  he  made  the  proposition  in  his  message  of  No- 
vember 21,  1848,  that  the  best  first  step  in  a  solution  of 
Raleigh  and  Gaston  troubles  as  well  as  general  transporta- 

294 


EAST  AND  WEST  CAROLINA  295 

tion  improvement  would  be  to  extend  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston 
Railroad  westward  presumably  through  Hillsboro,  Greens- 
boro and  Salisbury  and  thence  down  southward  to  Charlotte  ; 
thus  he  would  make  the  Maine  to  Georgia  line  pass  from 
Richmond  through  Raleigh  and  his  own  home  town,  instead 
of  from  Richmond  to  Danville  and  Greensboro.  "Through  a 
part  of  North  Carolina  alone,"  said  he,  "a  link  is  wanting,  to 
complete  the  grand  chain  of  communication,  from  one  ex- 
tremity of  our  country  to  the  other,  and  to  furnish  the  whole 
nation  those  facilities  of  intercourse  which  the  inhabitants 
north  and  south  of  us  enjoy  in  their  several  sections."  He 
argued  that  branch  lines  could  be  built  to  Fayetteville  and 
Goldsboro,  "and  eventually  it  might  realize  that  scheme  of  a 
central  railroad  consecrated  by  the  patriotic  labors  of  Cald- 
well, in  an  extension  from  Goldsboro  to  Beaufort."  He 
thought  it  the  first  improvement,  which  should  engage  their 
energies,  and  recommended  patronage  of  the  state  to  half  or 
at  least  two-fifths.  It  would  be  about  160  miles  and  would 
cost  about  $10,000  a  mile.  Besides  this  he  recommended  the 
other  projects  that  Governor  Morehead  had  advocated,  and 
which  were  now  looked  upon  as  Whig  projects.  The  Als- 
sembly,  on  the  30th,  requested  him  to  submit  a  railroad  plan, 
which  he  did  on  December  4,  1848. 

The  main  feature  of  his  plan  was  the  organization  of  a 
joint  stock  company — "The  North  Carolina  Railroad  Com- 
pany"—of  $2,000,000  capital,  half  to  be  taken  by  the  State, 
and  providing  for  absorption  of  Raleigh  &  Gaston  Stockhold- 
ers. In  his  later  developed  plan  he  seems  to  have  put  the 
road  through  the  counties  south  of  those  of  his  own  and  Ex- 
Governor  Morehead's,  but  taking  in  Salisbury — the  place 
where  the  June  Danville-Charlotte  Convention  was  held,  but 
he  treated  it  as  covering  strips  both  50  and  100  miles  wide. 
The  west,  or  that  part  of  it  in  favor  of  the  Charlotte-Dan- 
ville link,  was  by  no  means  convinced  of  Governor  Graham's 
presentation,  and  were  still  quite  determined  to  have  their 
link  charter.  The  result  was  that  neither  charter  was  se- 
cured, but  after  Governor  Manly's  inauguration,  and  with 
his  approval,  Senator  William  S.  Ashe  of  New  Hanover 
[Wilmington]   and  his  friends,  among  whom  was  Edward 


296  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Stanly  of  Beaufort  county,  conceived  of  the  idea  of  divid- 
ing this  western  plum,  instead  of  giviing  it  all  to  the  Raleigh 
and  Gaston,  by  giving  half  to  the  Wilmington  &  Weldon  by 
the  very  simple  means  of  extending  it  east  of  Raleigh  to  the 
latter  road  at  Waynesboro  [Goldsboro] — a  step  in  the  di- 
rection of  the  old  Caldwell  project  to  Beaufort  harbor,  as 
Ex-Governor  Graham  had  suggested  as  a  possibility.  A 
feature  of  this  plan  was  that  it  should  be  financed,  one-third 
by  the  people  and  two-thirds  by  the  State,  up  to  $3,000,000 ; 
that  the  Raleigh-Gaston  people  should  put  that  road  in  con- 
dition to  the  extent  of  $500,000,  for  which  the  state  would 
return  half  their  stock  and  release  their  bonds;  that  the 
Gaston- Weldon  connection  of  a  dozen  miles  should  be  built 
on  a  half  and  half  basis;  and  that  the  Neuse  and  Tar  rivers 
should  be  improved  for  the  small  steamboats  recently  put 
on.  Mr.  Stanly  led  the  fight  for  this  in  the  House  and 
warned  his  eastern  brethren  that  if  they  did  not  support  it, 
he  would  vote  for  the  Danville  link.  The  result  was  that 
the  House  passed  it  on  January  19,  1849,  with  a  clear  ma- 
jority of  6  votes,  and  sent  it  to  the  Senate  for  concurrence.^ 

In  this  latter  body  it  was  destined  to  have  no  such  clear 
sailing.  It  came  up  on  the  afternoon  of  January  25,  1849, 
for  third  reading.  Senator  Drake  called  for  yeas  and  nays. 
"The  moment  was  one  of  intense  interest,"  says  the  Raleigh 
Register,  "The  audience  generally  were  ignorant  of  the  views 
of  the  Speaker  [Calvin  Graves],  and  when  he  had  announced 
that  the  Yeas  were  22,  Nays,  22,  the  stillness  was  death- 
like ;  until  the  magical  words,  'The  Chair  decides  in  the 
affirmative,'  relieved  suspense.  The  applause  which  suc- 
ceeded was  deafening,  and  it  was  some  minutes  before  order 
could  be  restored."  The  bill  became  a  law  on  Friday,  January 
26,  1849.  The  men  who  voted  for  it  besides  Speaker  Graves, 
were  Senators  Ashe  [the  author],  Bell,  Daniel,  Davidson, 
Gilmer,  Hargrove,  Hawkins,  Joyner,  Lane,  Lillington,  Miller, 


^  Hon.  D.  M.  Barringer,  in  his  sketch  of  state  railroads,  attributes  the  suc- 
cess of  this  vote  to  another  dramatic  event  of  the  session  attending  the  passage 
of  a  bill  to  create  an  Insane  Asylum,  which  had  been  so  earnestly  urged  by 
both  Ex-Governors — Morehead  and  Graham.  The  event  was  the  appearance  of 
Miss  Dorothy  Dix  before  the  Assembly  and  her  powerful  plea  for  the  insane, 
incidentally  to  which  she  drew  such  a  picture  of  the  rords  of  North  Carolina 
that  she  broke  down  the  lines  of  the  law-makers  in  both  directions! 


EAST  AND  WEST  CAROLINA  297 

Murchison,  Patterson,  Rowland,  Shepard,  Smaw,  Thomas  of 
Davidson,  Thomas  of  Haywood,  Thompson  of  Wake,  Wash- 
ington, Woodfin  and  Worth.  Speaker  Graves  was  Speaker 
pro  tempore  in  place  of  Speaker  Andrew  Joyner,  a  Whig, 
who  had  fallen  ill ;  and  it  had  been  a  great  compliment  to  his 
character  that,  as  a  conservative  Democrat,  the  Whigs  had 
elevated  him  to  this  position.  Doubtless  the  leading  Whigs 
knew  his  private  views  on  the  subject  and  knew  how  he 
would  vote  upon  this  most  important  of  their  measures,  be- 
side which  all  others  sank  into  insignificance.  Of  course 
the  author  of  the  bill  was  a  Democrat  from  the  Wilmington 
district,  and  this  great  measure  was  secured  otherwise  by 
giving  Fayetteville  a  plank  road  to  it.  Speaker  Graves,  a 
Democrat  also,  came  from  a  county,  Caswell,  near  the  pro- 
posed Danville-Qiarlotte  link,  which  both  favored  the  link 
and  opposed  state  aid,  and  his  famous  casting  vote  was 
followed  by  his  resignation  as  Speaker  pro  tempore  and  re- 
instatement of  Speaker  Joyner,  who  had  recovered ;  while 
the  people  of  Caswell  permanently  retired  him  from  public 
life.  The  Whig  and  progressive  elements  of  the  state,  how- 
ever, from  that  day  forward  made  a  hero  of  him  and  more 
than  one  project  of  a  statue  to  him  has  been  proposed. 

And  still — a  North  Carolina  Central  Railroad  had  been 
proposed  and  even  incorporated  long  before  this,  and  came 
to  nothing!  It  is  true  Wilmington  had  never  favored  it  be- 
fore and  it  had  never  secured  so  good  financial  conditions ; 
but  it  is  also  true  that  never  before  was  there  so  imminent  a 
threat  of  a  Charlotte-Danville  trunk-line  link  for  a  trans- 
national line  that  threatened  to  isolate  the  east  by  cutting  off 
her  back-country  commerce !  Nature  and  events  were  favor- 
ing the  land-locked  west,  like  the  "stars  in  their  courses ;" 
and  let  it  not  be  forgotten  this  project  had  been  a  western  one 
of  Caldwell  and  Morehead,  since  the  "Carleton"  papers  of 
1827;  and  it  was  only  the  grinding  of  the  mills  of  the  gods 
that  forced  the  Wilmington  representative  to  finally  accept 
it  as  a  desperate  measure  of  self-preservation,  in  an  eft'ort  to 
stay  the  march  of  a  transnational  line  down  the  Piedmont 
into  Georgia  and  the  southwest. 

February  was  not  far  advanced  when  Governor  Manly 


298  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

called  his  Council  to  reorganize  the  Improvement  Board; 
and  the  Salisbury  Convention,  headed  by  David  F.  Caldwell 
reconvened  to  help  forward  the  newly  proposed  North 
Carolina  Railroad,  as  though,  for  the  time  at  least,  they  had 
<yiven  up  the  Danville  link,  or  that  part  of  it  not  now 
covered  by  the  projected  road;  for,  if  the  new  road  went  to 
Greensboro,  the  link  would  then  be  complete  except  for 
crossing  two  counties — Guilford  and  Rockingham — a  link  so 
short  and  so  necessary  to  complete  the  transnational  line, 
that,  sooner  or  later,  it  would  be  impossible  to  prevent  it. 
Following  the  Salisbury  meeting,  Guilford  county  called  a 
Greensboro  meeting  for  February  court;  and  the  Raleigh 
Whig  editor  called  for  similar  meetings  in  the  whole  state ; 
adding  that  The  Salisbury  Watchman  said  that  they  were 
trying  to  form  a  list  of  a  hundred  men  to  take  the  whole 
stock  in  Rowan  and  surrounding  counties !  The  Greensboro 
meeting  on  20th  February  provided  for  ten  delegates  to  an- 
other Salisbury  convention  on  June  14th,  Senator  Gilmer 
leading  in  it.    In  March,  Raleigh  had  a  meeting. 

This  agitation,  it  should  be  noted,  and  unfavorable  com- 
parison with  other  states  in  railway  matters  should  be  taken 
for  what  it  was :  Advocacy.  For,  in  1848,  only  New  York, 
Massachusetts,  Pennsylvania,  Georgia,  Virginia,  Connecti- 
cut, Michigan  and  New  Hampshire  had  a  greater  mileage, 
and  the  last  three  of  these  but  slightly  more ;  so  that  she  was 
practically  surpassed  in  her  255  miles  of  railroad  by  but  five 
states  in  any  material  degree.  It  will  be  observed  that 
Georgia  and  Virginia,  with  602  and  406  miles  respectively, 
led  the  South  and  ranked  next  to  Pennsylvania,  and  were  on 
both  sides  of  North  Carolina  at  Charlotte  and  Danville  offer- 
ing tremendous  railway  connection  to  western  North 
Carolina ;  and  that  the  section  of  the  new  North  Carolina 
Railroad  between  Charlotte  and  Salisbury  or  Greensboro 
would  itself  furnish  a  large  section  of  that  longed  for  link! 
Indeed,  in  the  North  Carolina  Railroad  the  west  was  receiv- 
ing more  than  three-fifths  of  the  Charlotte-Danville  link! 
And  they  could  well  trust  Father  Time  for  the  rest !  No 
wonder  they  accepted  the  new  project  with  alacrity.  The 
remaining  43  miles  of  air  line  between  Greensboro  and  Dan- 


EAST  AND  WEST  CAROLINA  299 

ville  was  bound  to  come  later;  no  one  could  stop  it.  Why- 
should  they,  indeed  ?  Had  not  Wilmington  been  trying  to  do 
the  same  thing  all  along,  in  the  east?  Hadn't  Raleigh  and 
Fayetteville  been  trying  to  do  the  same  thing  in  the  center? 
Certainly  they  had ;  and  were  even  now  doing  so  in  connect- 
ing Charlotte  and  Raleigh ! 

A  state  convention  was  agitated  during  the  spring  and 
there  seemed  to  be  a  new  hope  in  the  people.  The  new  in- 
corporating act  named  fifteen  commissioners  to  put  it  into 
effect ;  and  among  them  was  Ex-Governor  Morehead,  who 
was  also  named  as  the  head  of  the  Greensboro  sub-com- 
mittee to  open  books  for  stock  subscriptions.  The  act  was 
well  drawn  and  anticipated  practically  every  feature  neces- 
sary to  successful  organization.  At  Hillsboro,  Orange 
county,  Ex-Governor  Graham  led  a  meeting  in  urgence  of 
the  line's  survey  through  that  town  and  county  on  Alarch 
15th.  By  April  a  South  Carolinian  offered  a  thousand  dollars 
for  the  contract  of  the  whole  road  from  Goldsboro  to  Char- 
lotte. The  press  began  comparing  the  gains  of  Boston, 
which  had  railroads,  with  New  York,  which  had  none :  Bos- 
ton increased  the  value  of  her  real  estate  from  $60,000,000 
(in  round  numbers)  in  1840  to  $97,000,000  in  1847;  while, 
for  the  same  period  and  estate,  New  York  scarcely  increased 
at  all— $187,100,000  to  $187,300,000  (in  round  numbers)  ! 
In  personal  estate,  Boston  increased  from  $34,000,000  to 
over  $64,000,000 ;  while  New  York  actually  decreased  about 
$8,000,000. 

Early  in  April,  the  Internal  Improvement  Board,  on 
which  Governor  Manly  had  put  Hon.  Calvin  Graves,  met; 
and  also  the  new  Commissioners  he  appointed  to  create  the 
new  Insane  Asylum,  of  which  commission  Ex-Governor 
Morehead  was  head  and  Mr.  Graves  next  in  order.  While 
they  were  in  Raleigh  on  the  19th  of  April  a  railroad  meeting 
was  held  and  addressed  by  Governor  Morehead  and  others, 
and  delegates  chosen  to  the  Salisbury  Convention  to  be  held 
June  14,  1849.  Governor  Morehead  pointed  to  Massachu- 
setts, Rhode  Island,  Georgia  and  Tennessee  as  good  illustra- 
tions of  state  development.  He  said  at  one  period  when  he 
almost  despaired  of  ever  securing  such  a  charter  as  was  now 


300  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

before  them,  he  had  favored  the  Danville-Charlotte  link  as  an 
outlet  for  his  part  of  the  state ;  but  with  the  Central  Railroad 
he  was  heartily  satisfied,  provided  it  could  be  built;  that 
Orange,  Guilford,  Davidson,  Rowan  and  Randolph  would 
do  their  full  share.  Indeed  he  believed  these  counties  would 
grade  their  part  of  the  road,  so  that  the  problem  was  the 
grading  in  Wake  County  and  Johnston ;  "what  would  Wake 
and  Johnston  do?  Would  they  grade  their  part?  If  so,  he 
believed  the  work  was  assured."  It  was  plain  that  Governor 
]\Iorehead  had  sounded  the  Keynote  of  the  coming  railway 
campaign  in  this  April  address  in  the  Raleigh  Court  House 
on  the  19th.  Before  the  meeting  was  over  he  emphasized 
the  need  of  the  Gaston- Weldon  link,  chiefly  for  its  access  to 
Norfolk  which  was  at  this  time  seeking  annexation  to  North 
Carolina,  because  she  was  so  neglected  by  Virginia.  Indeed, 
the  North  Carolina  Central  Railroad  seemed  to  be  as  hopeful 
as  the  Washington  Monument,  of  which  twenty  feet  was 
now  completed.  On  May  19th  a  meeting  was  held  at  the 
tri-county  corners  below  what  is  now  High  Point  and  men 
pledged  themselves  to  grade  from  a  quarter  to  a  mile  of  road 
to  the  amount  of  15  miles.  Other  meetings  were  held  along 
the  proposed  line. 

These  were  busy  days  for  "The  Old  War  Horse:"  one 
day  at  Edgeworth  Seminary,  another  in  a  railroad  meeting, 
still  another  at  the  University  Commencement,  where  he 
was  both  Trustee  and  President  of  the  Alumni  Association, 
and  granting  degrees  to  everybody  but  himself.^  Then  came 
the  Salisbury  Convention,  with  over  225  delegates  from  the 
State  and  Norfolk  and  Portsmouth,  with  twenty  odd  coun- 
ties represented.  The  meeting  was  held  in  the  Lutheran 
Church  and  Governor  Morehead  was  chosen  President 
unanimously  and  made  the  keynote  address.  He  was  also 
one  of  the  Committee  of  30  to  organize  the  program.  Gov- 
ernors Morehead  and  Graham  believed  in  an  appeal  to  the 
people,  while  Governor  Swain  suggested  getting  a  hundred 
men  to  subscribe  the  million  themselves.  President  More- 
head,  President  Mordecai  of  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston  road  and 

'  Maria  Edgeworth,  after  whom  the  seminary  was  named,  died  the  21st 
of  May,  ten  days  after  the  school's  commencemeiiL     She  was  83   years  old. 


EAST  AND  WEST  CAROLINA  301 

Dr.  W.  R.  Holt  were  made  the  Executive  Committee  to  or- 
ganize subscription.  It  was  plainly  evident  that  the  North 
Carolina  Central  Railroad  was  at  last  to  be  built !  Further- 
more President  Morehead  was  authorized  to  appoint  a  dele- 
gation of  three  to  the  Memphis  Convention  in  July  to  pro- 
mote a  trans-continental  railroad.^  Governor  Swain  was 
made  chairman  of  this  delegation. 

It  was  interesting  to  see  how  men  began  again  to  recur 
to  the  ideas  of  Murphy  and  Caldwell,  whose  apt  pupil  was 
unanimously  chosen  the  head  of  this  Convention  and  who 
had  personified  those  broad  ideas  in  his  own  life  ever  since 
the  famous  Murphy  Reports  and  the  "Carlton"  letters  of 
President  Caldwell !  Men  began  to  recur  to  them  in  the 
press  as  if  they  had  suddenly  became  current.  Murphy  and 
Caldwell  were  now  incarnate  in  John  Motley  Morehead. 
The  whole  state  began  to  respond  to  his  leadership.  The 
east  and  the  west  were  about  to  unite  in  him — for  the  first 
time  in  reality.  It  was  difficult  for  the  Fourth  of  July  or 
even  politics  to  get  the  usual  hearing,  as  the  summer  of  1849 
proceeded.  Petersburgh  and  Norfolk  were  as  much  awake 
to  it  as  North  Carolina  herself,  for  they  were  bound  to 
profit  by  it.  Governor  Swain  placed  himself  at  the  disposal 
of  Governor  Morehead  and  went,  at  his  request,  over  the 
Georgia  railroads,  making  a  careful  study  of  them  and  re- 
porting in  excellent  letters  of  June  22nd  and  later.-  He 
showed  that  one  road,  beginning  at  a  wilderness  site  in  1837, 
had  made  of  that  wilderness  "the  flourishing  town  of  At- 
lanta," and  said  he,  "as  the  road  advanced,  the  tribe  of 
croakers  retired."  He  thought  stockholders  of  North  Caro- 
lina roads  who  had  suffered  would  yet  be  looked  upon  as 
heroic  pioneers !  Thus  the  campaign  proceeded — even  in 
spite  of  a  cholera  epidemic,  as  well  as  political  campaign; 
and  by  August  even  the  Wilmington  &  Weldon  Railroad 
subscribed  $15,000  to  the  new  road.  In  Davidson  county 
about  $30,000  was  subscribed  and  Rowan  exceeded  that 
slightly.     Raleigh  was  proposing  to  take  $25,000  as  a  cor- 


1  The  Memphis  Convention  was  postponed  to  October  16th,  on  account  of 
cholera  in  July. 

2  Raieigh  Register  of  July  25,   1849. 


302  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

poration.  Another  Convention,  at  Greensboro,  this  time,  for 
October  18th,  was  announced,  but  it  was  postponed  until 
November  29th,  as  Governor  Morehead  announced  on  Oc- 
tober 5th. ^  This  was  scarcely  issued  before  Salisbury  had  a 
meeting  and  agreed  to  form  a  company  of  20  men  to  take 
$100,000  and  asked  for  the  corporation  of  Salisbury  to  vote 
stock.  And  yet,  in  the  midst  of  all  this,  Governor  Morehead 
was  in  New  York  on  the  21st  of  October,  and  other  places, 
inspecting  asylums  for  the  insane  to  guide  his  board  in  cre- 
ating a  North  Carolina  institution.  Meanwhile  President 
Stephen  A.  Douglas  was  presiding  over  the  great  Trans- 
continental Railroad  Convention  at  Memphis  on  the  15th  and 
providing  a  later  meeting  in  Philadelphia. 

But  Governor  Morehead  was  back  in  Greensboro  early 
in  November ;  and  at  a  railroad  meeting  in  their  Court  House 
to  increase  the  $60,000  subscription  of  Guilford  County. 
The  Swain  proposition  of  a  100  shares  was  changed  to  as- 
sociations taking  *one  of  a  hundred  shares  of  whatever  bal- 
ance there  was.  Immediately  Associations  were  formed  to 
take  twelve  and  a  half  shares,  so  that  Guilford  county  was 
now  responsible  for  $150,000,  not  counting  late  news  from 
Springfield  of  some  $16,000  subscribed. 

This  local  convention  was  preparatory  to  the  general 
Greensboro  Railroad  Convention  of  November  29th. 

In  November,  1849,  about  twenty-five  counties  elected 
delegates  to  this  Railroad  Convention  at  Greensboro.  They 
met  in  the  Presbyterian  Church.  Governor  Morehead 
headed  the  Guilford  delegation  and,  after  temporary  organi- 
zation, he  rose  to  nominate  a  President.  He  said  here  was 
"the  opportunity  to  elect  one  that  would  be  an  honor  to  the 
state ;  and  proceeded  to  pass  a  high  eulogium  upon  Calvin 
Graves  of  Caswell,  who  had  given  the  casting  vote  by  which 
this  charter  had  been  passed ;  and  concluded  by  moving  that 
he  be  unanimously  appointed  President  of  the  North  Caro- 
lina Railroad  Convention."  His  advice  was  followed  and 
President  Graves  made  an  address  in  which  he  said  England 

'  A  railroad  of  North  Carolina  not  much  mentioned  was  the  Wilmington  & 
Manchester  Railroad  from  Wilmington  into  South  Carolina,  66  miles  in  the 
state,  had  129  miles  of  the  162  miles  road  under  contract  at  this  time;  so  that 
Wilmington  had  no  objection  to  "links"   for  herself. 


EAST  AND  WEST  CAROLINA  303 

had  expended  two  hundred  milhon  pounds  sterhng  in  rail- 
roads, which  often  cost  over  $60,000  a  mile  merely  for  right 
of  way ;  and  states  of  this  country  were  making  strides  in 
the  same  direction.  Governor  Morehead  made  a  "speech  of 
great  power"  and  moved  for  a  committee  on  subscription. 
This  was  done  and  he  headed  it.  He  was  also  a  Vice-Presi- 
dent of  the  Convention,  with  five  others,  among  w^hom  was 
Hon.  Richard  AI.  Saunders.  The  Convention  was  a  vigor- 
ous one,  and  the  most  forceful  figure  in  it  was  the  Greens- 
boro ex-Governor.  Reporting  on  subscriptions  he  showed 
the  absolute  subscriptions  to  stock  were  $190,800;  and  fol- 
lowed "with  a  speech  full  of  deep  impassioned  feeling  and 
great  power — listened  to  with  breathless  attention  and  the 
most  intense  interest.  The  gallant  and  determined  spirit  of 
this  distinguished  gentleman  touched  every  heart  in  that  as- 
sembly, and  awoke  a,  feeling  of  enthusiasm  and  anxiety, 
deep,  startling  and  fervent  as  we  have  ever  witnessed."^ 
General  Saunders,  chairman  of  the  Resolution  Committee, 
aided  in  preserving  the  program  for  the  whole  road  or  none ; 
and  John  A.  Gilmer  of  Greensboro  presented  a  form  of  addi- 
tional subscriptions  to  complete  the  million  dollars  individual 
subscription  by  signers  agreeing  to  take  a  hundredth  part 
of  the  unraised  balance.  Governor  Morehead  headed  a  list 
of  fifty-one,  and  by  afternoon  $630,000  was  regularly  sub- 
scribed, leaving  only  $380,000  to  be  raised.  It  was  then  pro- 
posed to  have  conventions  in  each  county  through  which  the 
road  would  run,  and  a  committee  be  appointed  to  prepare 
and  issue  a  public  address.  These  latter  were  Messrs.  Saun- 
ders, McRae,  Griswold,  McLeod,  Swain,  Graham,  Trol- 
linger,  J.  M.  Morehead,  Thomas,  Lord,  Fox  and  Barringer. 

Governor  M tried  hard  to  get  the  convention  to  double 

subscriptions  and  close  it  up,  but  did  not  succeed.  The 
Convention  was  a  great  unifying  influence,  for  seldom  had 
men  of  such  opposite  views  come  to  act  together  so  fully. 
The  51  territorially  were  as  follows:  Wilmington,  5; 
Craven,  1 ;  Wayne,  2 ;  Johnston,  1 ;  Raleigh,  6 ;  Franklin, 
1 ;  Orange,  4 ;  Alamance,  1 ;  Guilford,  12 ;  Rockingham,  1 ; 

^  Editor  Greensboro  Patriot,   1st  Dec.,   1849. 


304  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Davidson,  4;  Rowan,  11;  Burke,  1;  and  Buncombe,  1. 
Guilford  and  Rowan  leading  far  ahead  of  all  in  unique  ri- 
valry. Someone  in  fun  suggested  that,  when  they  were  at  a 
tie  Guilford  get  ahead  and  a  humorous,  witty  play  was  had 
back  and  forth  until  the  Quaker  firm  of  Simpson  &  Gibson 
put  Guilford  ahead,  and,  as  they  said,  in  compliment  to 
President  Graves.  This  was  the  secret  of  the  leadership  of 
Guilford  and  Rowan.^ 

The  Greensboro  Convention  of  November  29,  1849,  ap- 
pointed committees  to  hold  meetings  and  the  chairmen, 
Graves,  John  T.  Gilmer  and  Governor  Morehead  were 
designated  to  take  the  western  territory.  On  January  17, 
1850,  Governor  Morehead  wrote  a  public  letter  of  report  to 
Chairman  R.  M.  Saunders  of  the  Executive  Committee  of 
the  North  Carolina  Railroad,  in  which  he  said:  "We  left 
here  on  the  3rd  inst.  and  attended  meetings  at  Union  Insti- 
tute in  Randolph,  Lexington,  Salisbury,  Concord,  Rocky 
River,  Charlotte,  Mount  Mourne,  Statesville,  Mocksville, 
Clemmonsville  and  Salem — reaching  this  place  [Greens- 
boro], last  night.  Our  efforts  were  mainly  directed  to  pro- 
curing 'the  Hundred'  individuals  or  companies  who  would 
become  responsible  for  the  balance  of  the  stock  not  covered 
or  taken  by  independent  subscriptions.  The  number  of  in- 
dividuals or  companies  who  added  their  names  to  the  list  has 
been  encouragingly  augmented : — Randolph  added  one ; 
Lexington  five ;  Salisbury  four ;  Concord  four ;  Rocky  River 
two ;  Charlotte  and  Mecklenburg  nothing ;  Mount  Mourne 
one ;  Statesville  none,  but  two  or  three  promised ;  Mocksville 
and  Davie  two ;  Clemmonsville  one  ;  Salem  two ; — making 
tzventy-tzvo  added  to  the  fifty-one  subscribed  at  the  Conven- 
tion. I  think  we  may  safely  calculate  on  four  or  five  more 
promised  shortly. 

"What  additions  have  been  made  to  'the  Hundred'  east 
of  this,  I  am  not  appraised,  save  as  the  four  additional 
names  in  Raleigh. 

"I  now  feel  assured  the  Railroad  will  be  built,  if  every 
good  citizen  does  his  duty  and  proper  exertions  are  made. 
The  best  spirit  prevailed  wherever  we  went.     .     .     . 

1  Greensboro  Patriot,  Dec.   15,  1849,  first  page,  column  four. 


EAST  AND  WEST  CAROLINA  305 

"This  is  the  great  work  of  the  day  for  North  Carolina; 
and  I  am  pleased  to  find  Whig  and  Democrat  contending 
side  by  side  which  shall  do  most  for  its  success.     .     .     . 

"It  is  desirable  that  the  Company  should  be  organized 
at  as  early  a  day  as  possible,  that  the  reconnaissance  of  the 
route,  preparatory  to  survey,  should  be  made  before  the 
leaves  put  forth  in  the  spring."^ 

On  December  10,  1849,  the  Committee  made  its  appeal 
and  on  the  15th  Governor  Morehead  and  Mr.  Graves  ad- 
dressed a  great  meeting  at  Raleigh,  where  between  $30,000 
and  $40,000  were  added  to  the  Wake  county  subscriptions. 
This  headed  a  series  of  thirteen  meetings  in  various  parts  of 
the  state  to  last  until  January  14,  1850. 

To  one  of  these  meetings,  that  at  Goldsboro  on  January 
3,  1850,  which  Governor  Morehead  was  unable  to  attend,  he 
wrote  saying,  that  "while  you  are  addressing  the  people  of 
Wayne,  let  it  cheer  you  to  know  that  I  am  making  the  hills 
of  Randolph  resound  in  behalf  of  the  Railroad.  It  is  the 
result  of  the  age  for  North  Carolina.  It  is  truly  the  great 
redeeming  improvement  which  is  to  make  us  one  people — 
one  state — one  great  community.  It  is  a  State  improvement 
— East  and  West  are  equally  interested  in  it — and  let  no 
croaker  against  this  great  State  work,  ever  hereafter  talk  of 
patriotism,  State  pride,  etc.  How  small  such  opposition 
will  look,  when  the  great  valleys  of  Western  North  Carolina 
shall  pour  along  this  road  its  exhaustless  productions — and 
when  the  Eastern  citizen  will  leave  his  rich  farm  in  the  East 
in  the  morning,  and  take  dinner  or  tea  with  his  wife  and 
children  in  the  West,  in  their  beautiful  summer  residence, 
purchased  on  some  mountain  side,  or  in  some  thriving  vil- 
lage, where  all  the  children  have  the  best  schools  at  their 

command. This  is  no  fancy  picture — it  will  be  realized  in 

less  than  ten  years  if  this  road  is  built — and  no  people  in 
the  State  are  more  interested  than  the  enterprising  and 
wealthy  citizens  of  Wayne.  Let  them  do  but  one-half  as 
much,  as  their  interest,  their  patriotism  and  their  State  pride, 
ought  to  inspire  them  to  do,  and  the  Road  is  safe. Guil- 
ford— poor  Guilford  has  already  done  more  than  she  is  able 

^  Greensboro  Patriot,  10th  Jan.,  1850. 


306  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

to  do ;  yet  let  Wayne  and  other  counties  do  something  worthy 
of  the  great  cause — worthy  of  themselves  and  worthy  of  the 
glorious  Old  North — and  Guilford,  poor  as  she  is,  will  still 
do  more — much  more.  The  Road  must  be  built.  Let  that  be 
the  watchword  of  every  Wayne  man,  and  the  Road  is  safe. 
Success,  triumphant  success,  attend  your  meeting  and  exer- 
tions.    Yours  in  all  the  bonds  that  can  unite  patriots  in  a 

glorious  State  enterprise J.  M.  Morehead."^    In  a  letter 

from  Mr.  Graves  at  Charlotte  he  says :  "Governor  Morehead 
is  making  what  he  calls  the  second  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence with  great  power." 

The  rising  tide  of  practical  enthusiasm  from  Goldsboro 
to  Charlotte — the  line  of  the  North  Carolina  Central  Road — 
began  to  threaten  even  beyond  it  to  Newbern,  where  at  a 
meeting  on  January  23rd,  they  resolved  "that  to  realize  the 
great  enterprise  of  a  Central  Railroad  binding  the  commer- 
cial ports  of  the  East  with  the  Western  farms,  once  projected 
by  a  Stanly,  a  Gaston  and  a  Caldwell,  the  North  Carolina 
Railroad  should  be  extended  to  the  town  of  New  Berne;" 
and,  after  a  speech  by  Gen.  Saunders,  they  subscribed 
$70,000  toward  the  extension  eastward  to  that  place. 

Thus  by  February  28,  1850,  the  railroad  Commissioners 
named  in  the  act,  were  able  to  announce  that  a  recent  meet- 
ing of  subscribers  held  at  Hillsboro  showed  that  the  required 
$1,000,000  had  been  subscribed,  but  was  not  all  done  in  a 
uniform  manner  prescribed  by  the  act.  The  Commissioners 
therefore  announced  and  ordered  the  opening  of  books  again 
on  March  8th  to  23rd,  in  the  indicated  places  and  in  Peters- 
burg, Va.,  at  which  time  $5  per  share  was  to  be  paid  in. 
They  also  announced  that  on  March  30,  1850,  the  Com- 
missioners would  meet  in  Greensboro  at  which  time  these 
moneys  were  to  be  deposited,  so  that  a  meeting  of  Stock- 
holders can  be  called  at  Salisbury  for  organization  and 
"commencement  of  operations  on  the  road."  At  the  Greens- 
boro meeting,  however,  it  was  discovered  that  the  Peters- 
burg Railroad  charter  had  a  clause  that  prevented  them 
making  their  $80,000  subscription  good;  and  that  this  and 


^  North   Carolina  Standard,   Jan.   23,   1850. 


EAST  AND  WEST  CAROLINA  307 

some  unfinished  subscriptions  in  Guilford  and  Davidson  left 
the  fund  $60,000  short,  although  five  per  cent  of  the  rest 
was  all  paid  in.  By  May  1st,  however,  all  but  between 
$12,000  and  $20,000  was  in  sight,  according  to  Governor 
Morehead's  statement  to  the  Greensboro  Patriot  and  it  was 
thought  the  Commissioners  could  be  called  by  the  16th. 
Thereupon  the  Asheville  Messenger  announced  that  a  man 
in  Raleigh  had  increased  his  subscription  from  $2500  to 
$10.000 :  "Wonder  what  'John'  will  say  now  ?"  It  was  the 
5th  of  June  before  the  Commissioners  met  in  the  Chapel 
of  the  University,  where  Chairman  IMorehead  announced  the 
completion  of  the  $1,000,000  subscription.  Thereupon  a 
meeting  of  the  Stockholders  was  called  at  Salisbury  on  July 
11,  1850.  This  University  meeting  was  to  allow  Governor 
Morehead  and  others  of  the  Commissioners  to  perform  their 
duties  as  Trustees  also. 

Two  days  before  the  Salisbury  meeting  another  Whig 
President  of  the  United  States  died  on  the  night  of  July  9th. 
This  was  such  a  blow  to  Governor  Morehead  as  it  could  be 
only  to  a  man  who  had  served  as  President  of  the  convention 
that  nominated  him ;  but  the  blow  fell  as  he  was  victorious 
in  the  chief  part  of  a  great  statesmanlike  program  for  North 
Carolina  development  for  which  he  had  stood  for  nearly  a 
quarter  of  a  century — since  the  days  of  his  old  University 
President's  "Carlton"  papers.  So  full  was  he  of  this  great 
enterprise  that  he  kept  it  in  the  public  thought  abreast,  if 
not  ahead  of  the  wide-spread  organization  of  Southern  re- 
sistance, especially  Democratic  resistance  to  Abolition  agi- 
tations of  the  north.'  A  large  part  of  the  "Carlton"  rail- 
road vertebrae  of  the  state,  from  the  mountains  to  the  main, 
was  now  to  be  a  reality.  The  wilderness  cries  of  a  Murphy 
and  a  Caldwell  were  at  last  heard  and  answered ;  and  the 
man  whom  they  taught  and  inspired,  John  Motley  Morehead, 
was  everywhere  recognized  as  their  executive  and  leader 
of  the  Old  North  State's  hosts! 


^  Governor  Morehead  was  chairman  of  a  Union  meeting  at  Greensboro  on 
October  23,  1850,  and  among  the  resolutions  was  the  following:  "That  we  will 
stand  by  the  Union  so  long  as  it  is  worth  preser-\-ing,  and  the  Constitution  is 
faithfully  administered;  and  we  will  maintain,  protect  and  defend  the  rights 
guaranteed  to  us  by  that  Constitution." 


XIV 

President  and  Builder 

OF 

The  North  Carolina  Central  Railroad 

1850 

On  July  11,  1850,  stockholders  and  proxies  in  the  North 
Carolina  Central  Railroad  met  at  Salisbury  and  Mr.  Duncan 
Cameron  was  called  to  the  chair,  on  motion  of  General 
Saunders.  Beside  the  towns  of  Newbern  and  Wilmington, 
there  were  represented  the  counties  of  Wayne,  Johnston, 
Wake,  Orange,  Alamance,  Randolph,  Guilford,  Rowan,  Cas- 
well, Rockingham,  Surry,  Davidson,  Davie,  Cabarrus,  Meck- 
lenburg, Iredell,  Forsyth,  Burke  and  Buncombe.  Rowan 
and  Guilford  each  had  two  directors  and  there  were  eight 
others.  Governor  Morehead,  Governor  Graham  and  General 
Saunders  being  among  the  number.  Governor  Morehead 
was  at  once  elected  President  of  the  company,  with  a  salary 
of  $2500 — a  considerable  sum  in  those  days,  however  in- 
significant it  may  appear  as  the  reward  of  a  railway  ex- 
ecutive now.^  They  then  set  to  work,  with  Mr.  Walter 
Gwynne  as  chief  engineer.  In  the  summer  and  fall  elections, 
however,  while  the  Whig  leaders  were  pressing  the  Central 
Railway  to  a  conclusion,  with  the  aid  of  some  Democrats 
like  General  Saunders,  the  Democratic  leaders,  like  Editor 
Holden  of  the  Raleigh  Standard,  were  not  wildly  enthusi- 
astic, to  say  the  least;  while  David  Settle  Reid,  with  the 
slogan  of  equal  suffrage,  overturned  the  Whig  majority  and 
was  chosen  Governor  by  about  2700  majority.  When  the 
legislature  met  in  November,  all  of  that  wrath  of  the  op- 
ponents of  Calvin  Graves  and  the  North  Carolina  Railroad 
came  to  a  head  on  November  26th,  when  a  Wayne  county 

1  Charles  L.  Hinton,  in  a  letter  of  22nd  Aug.,  1850,  to  Governor  Graham, 
says  that  in  the  last  day  or  so  Governor  Morehead  had  such  a  fall  from  his 
horse  that  several  physicians  were  called  in;  but  that  it  proved  not  to  be  very 

serious. 

308 


BUILDS  NORTH  CAROLINA  RAILROAD  309 

representative  in  the  Commons  presented  a  bill  to  repeal  the 
North  Carolina  Central  Railroad  bill !  This  was  to  be  ex- 
pected when  only  twenty-one  counties  had  interest  enough 
to  produce  stockholders.  It  is  true  the  bill  was  against  the 
law  of  obligation  of  contracts  and  so  was  a  species  of  repudi- 
ation, but  it  did  not  lack  advocates,  as  likewise  the  other 
side  did  not.  It  was  General  Saunders,  probably,  more  than 
anyone  else  who  headed  ofif  his  party's  efiforts  to  destroy 
the  work  of  the  past  years.  Secession  was  advocated  with 
even  greater  earnestness ;  and  these  were  going  on  while  the 
Railroad  Directors  were  in  session  in  Raleigh. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  Legislature,  Senator  Woodfin  of  Bun- 
combe county,  as  well  as  the  Newbern  and  Beaufort  people, 
were  taking  measures  to  persuade  the  State  to  extend  the 
Central  Railroad  east  and  west  according  to  the  old  Cald- 
well idea.  Senator  Woodfin  offering  a  resolution  to  that 
eflfect.  But  the  Directors  had  scarcely  adjourned,  when, 
during  December  an  Industrial  Convention  was  held  in  the 
Supreme  Court  rooms  of  the  capitol,  designed  to  stimulate 
industries  all  over  the  state  to  get  ready  to  produce  traffic 
on  President  Morehead's  newly  organized  railroad.  On  mo- 
tion of  Col.  Henry  B.  Elliott,  the  Convention  unanimously 
chose  Governor  Morehead  President.  It  was  determined  to 
hold  state  exhibitions  of  products  in  the  form  of  "State 
Fairs,"  as  was  done  in  other  states,  under  the  title  "North 
Carolina  Industrial  Association."  These  exhibitions  were 
to  be  held  at  Raleigh  in  October  of  each  year,  and  were  to 
include  agricultural,  manufacturing,  mining  and  mechanical 
products  under  conditions  of  generous  rivalry.  With  the 
permanent  organization.  Governor  Morehead  was  chosen 
President  of  that  also,  and  Governor  Swain  and  others  were 
among  the  Vice-Presidents.  Their  first  act  was  to  ask  the 
Assembly  for  geological,  mineralogical  and  agricultural  sur- 
veys. It  is  no  wonder  these  gentlemen  were  indignantly 
impatient  with  persistent  secession  agitation  in  some  quarters 
of  the  state  and  still  more  outside  of  it.  Indeed  they  were 
so  busy  with  this  splendid  plan  of  development  of  the  com- 
monwealth that  they  hardly  allowed  sufficiently  for  the  dis- 
organizing national  influences  abroad.     So  it  was  a  great 


310  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

comfort  to  them  when  news  came  at  this  time  of  Georgia's 
thunderous  protest  against  secession  by  a  vote  of  237  to  19! 
Stephen  A.  Douglas  happened  to  be  visiting  in  Governor 
]\Iorehead's  old  home  county  at  Wentworth  on  December 
27 ,  1850,  at  the  same  time,  and  his  voice  was  raised  for 
Union  against  secession  in  a  great  Union  meeting  there.  But 
this  was  lost  sight  of  in  the  running  fight  made  in  many 
ways  to  still  defeat  the  North  Carolina  Railroad;  but  the 
threat  of  men  like  Caldwell  of  Guilford  that  if  the  Central 
charter  was  touched  the  Danville-Charlotte  link  would  go  on 
the  map  instanter  softened  the  ardor  of  the  Anti-Central 
leaders. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  activity.  Governor — or,  as  it  is 
now  proper  to  call  him  as  head  of  the  Central  Railroad — 
President  Morehead  was  quietly  waiting  announcements  of 
the  next  session  of  Edgeworth  Seminary  on  the  first  Mon- 
day in  February,  1851,  and  presenting  a  list  of  references 
from  Union  Theological  Seminary,  New  York,  Rev.  Wm.  C. 
Plummer  of  Baltimore,  President  Carnahan  and  Professor 
Alexander  of  Princeton  and  Professor  Henry  of  the  Smith- 
sonian Institution,  showing  that  he  expected  students  from 
all  over  the  Union. 

This,  however,  was  by  the  way.  The  surveys  were 
being  pushed  by  President  Morehead  and  his  engineers ;  and 
he  saw  to  it  that  the  great  success  of  Georgia  was  known  to 
all  North  Carolina :  "It  appears,"  said  the  Raleigh  Register, 
"that  before  the  close  of  the  year  1852,  that  state  will  have 
in  operation  upwards  of  nine  hundred  miles  of  road."  Those 
completed  were  already  paying  8  to  16  per  cent  on  the  in- 
vestment; and  after  paying  $14,000,000  nearly,  the  state  was 
twice  as  rich  as  before.  The  state  in  ten  years  had  increased 
in  population  fifty  per  cent,  while  North  Carolina  had 
gained  but  about  twelve  per  cent!  The  Georgia  Central 
from  Savannah  to  Macon  was  the  great  road." 


1  The  growth  of  railroads  in  Georgia  was  remarkable:  With  40  miles  in 
1838;  88  miles  in  1840;  148  miles  in  1844;  213  miles  in  1847;  the  ratio  of  ex- 
penses to  receipts  decreased  from  54  per  cent  in  1838  to  34  per  cent  in  1849; 
and  net  profits  rose  from  $16,386  in  1838  to  $386,232  in  1849;  and  total  re- 
ceipts rose  from  $35,753  in  1838  to  $582,015  in  1849.— Senator  John  A.  Gilmer 
of  Guilford  in  a  speech  in  the  North  Carolina  Senate,  against  the  attack  on  the 
North   Carolina  Central   Railroad. 


BUILDS  NORTH  CAROLINA  RAILROAD  311 

Then  came  the  Directors'  meeting  of  May  12,  1851,  at 
Raleigh,  that  showed  the  road  had  been  located  through 
Goldsboro,  Raleigh,  Hillsboro,  Graham,  Greensboro,  James- 
town, Lexington,  Salisbury,  Concord  and  Charlotte ;  and  the 
whole  was  ordered  under  contract  by  July  9th.  At  this 
meeting  Chief  Engineer  Gwynne  made  an  elaborate  report, 
describing  each  of  the  four  divisions:  1.  Goldsboro  to  6| 
miles  west  of  Raleigh;  2.  Thence  to  Guilford  county  line; 
3.  Thence  to  Lexington ;  and  4.  Thence  to  Charlotte.  He 
wrote  with  the  vision  of  a  statesman  as  well  as  engineer,  and 
saw  this  road's  extension  over  the  mountains,  for  which 
surveys  were  already  authorized ;  and  to  Beaufort,  toward 
which  a  charter  was  already  granted  as  far  as  Newbern.  He 
suggested  10  locomotives,  6  passenger  cars,  4  baggage  and 
mail  cars,  and  80  "burthen  cars"  as  a  beginning ;  and  various 
other  features  of  construction.^ 

While  these  constructive  proceedings  were  occurring,  the 
State,  by  early  summer,  was  tense  with  Union  sentiments 
on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  secession  agitation  led  by 
a  candidate  for  Congress,  Hon.  A.  W.  Venable,  and  some 
Abolitionist  propaganda  in  the  west,  especially  in  Guilford 
county,  where  an  Ohio  man  named  McBride  was  so  exciting 
the  people  that  they  formed  a  Vigilance  Committee  and  per- 
suaded him  to  seek  other  territory,  where  they  were  not  so 
devoted  to  the  Union  and  had  less  detestation  of  both  Dis- 
unionist  and  Abolitionist  alike ! 

On  June  25,  1851,  while  President  Alorehead  was  in 
Raleigh,  a  meeting  of  friends  of  the  Central  Road  was  held 
and  resolutions  passed  suggesting  that  a  ceremony  of  "break- 
ing ground"  be  held  at  Greensboro,  on  the  11th  of  July,  next 
day  after  the  Directors'  meeting.  President  Morehead  ad- 
dressed them,  telling  them  that  the  whole  of  Wayne  county 
sections,  except  one  and  a  bridge  had  been  contracted  for; 
indeed  that  the  entire  line  east  of  Raleigh  was  substantially 
under  contract.  He  believed  all  would  be  so  before  July 
11th,  and  hoped  they  would  all  be  present  at  the  "breaking 

'  President  Morehead  advertised  bids  for  contracting  in  May  25,  1851 — the 
work  to  begin  not  later  than  January  1,  1852,  and  to  be  completed  by  January 
1,  1854.  Payment  was  to  be  made,  one-half  cash  and  one-half  stock  in  the 
road.     The  road  was  223  miles  long. 


312  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

ground"  ceremonies.  Greensboro  immediately  took  it  up 
with  enthusiasm  and  provided  a  committee  to  prepare  a  great 
barbecue  and  other  entertainment  to  "all  friends  of  North 
Carolina!" 

The  ceremony  of  "breaking  ground"  for  the  North  Caro- 
lina Central  Railroad  occurred  at  Greensboro  on  Friday, 
July  11,  1851,  at  the  time  of  the  meeting  of  Stock-holders. 
"On  coming  down  the  street  from  the  place  of  meeting," 
says  the  editor  of  the  Greensboro  Patriot,  in  the  issue  of 
July  12th,  "a  crowd  of  people  appeared,  ready  for  the  cele- 
bration, such  as  we  may  safely  say  was  never  seen  before  in 
our  town,  for  numbers.  It  was  one  universal  jam  all  out  of 
doors.  The  young  gentlemen  who  acted  as  marshals  had 
enough  work  of  it  to  persuade  this  vast  and  unwieldy  crowd 
into  marching  shape ;  but  they  at  length  succeeded  to  a  degree 
which  at  first  appeared  impossible. '  The  procession  was 
formed  on  West  street — the  clergy  in  front ;  then  the  stock- 
holders; then  the  orders  of  Odd  Fellows  and  Free  Masons, 
who  turned  out  in  great  numbers  and  in  full  regalia ;  closing 
with  the  citizens  generally.  This  immense  line  moved  down 
South  street  to  a  point  on  the  Railroad  survey  nearly  oppo- 
site the  Caldwell  Institute  building,  where  a  space  of  a 
hundred  feet  each  way  was  enclosed  by  a  line  and  reserved 
for  the  ceremony  of  the  day.  The  north  side  of  this  space 
was  occupied  by  the  ladies,  whose  smiles  are  always  ready 
for  the  encouragement  of  every  good  word  and  work.  The 
other  three  sides  were  soon  occupied  by  the  male  portion 
of  the  assemblage,  from  ten  to  tzventy  deep  all  around. 
.  .  .  Having  the  misfortune  to  be  among  the  outsiders, 
our  situation  was  of  course  unfavorable  for  hearing,  and 
seeing  was  impossible.  But  we  did  hear  nearly  every  word 
of  Gov.  Morehead's  clear  sonorous  voice  as  he  introduced 
the  Hon.  Calvin  Graves  to  the  vast  assemblage.  He  did 
this  in  terms  eloquent  and  singularly  appropriate  to  the  oc- 
casion. After  alluding  to  the  necessity  so  long  felt  by  our 
people  for  an  outlet  to  the  commercial  world — to  the  incep- 
tion of  a  great  scheme  the  commencement  of  which  we  had 
met  today  to  celebrate — to  the  vicissitudes  of  the  charter  be- 
fore the  two  houses  of  the  General  Assembly,  and  the  fact 


BUILDS  NORTH  CAROLINA  RAILROAD  313 

that  it  at  last  hung  upon  the  decision  of  the  Speaker  of  the 
Senate,  and  that  its  fate  was  decided  in  the  afifirmative  by 
the  unfaltering  'Aye'  of  that  Speaker — Calvin  Graves — he 
said  no  other  citizen  of  North  Carolina  could  so  appropri- 
ately perform  the  ceremony  of  removing  the  first  earth  in 
the  commencement  of  this  work,  on  which  the  hopes  of  the 
State  so  vitally  depend,  as  the  man  who  pronounced  that 
decisive  'Aye.'  "  Then  followed  Speaker  Graves'  address,  at 
the  close  of  which,  he  dug  up  a  few  spadefuls  of  earth  de- 
positing them  in  a  box  made  for  the  purpose ;  upon  which 
Governor  Alorehead  said  it  was  to  remain  in  the  box  for  a 
hundred  years  and  then  opened  for  their  inspection,  a  pleas- 
antry hugely  enjoyed.  Over  seventy  of  that  hundred  years 
have  passed  and  one  wonders  where  the  box  is  now,  as  the 
vast  traffic  of  the  Southern  Railway  noisily  rumbles  over 
the  spot  from  which  Calvin  Graves  removed  those  first 
spadefuls.  The  event  closed  with  a  barbecue  already  pre- 
pared and  the  great  railway  system  of  North  Carolina  was 
started  on  its  course  down  the  decades. 

As  has  been  said.  President  Morehead  and  the  Central 
Railroad  had  taken  so  vital  a  hold  on  the  people  of  North 
Carolina  that  the  call  of  Ex-Governor  Graham  to  be  Secre- 
tary of  the  Navy  seemed  to  cause  scarcely  a  ripple  on  the 
surface  of  public  news.  But  in  October,  1851,  Guilford 
county  took  the  lead  in  nominating  for  President  and  Vice- 
President,  both  President  Fillmore  and  his  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  Ex-Governor  Graham,  to  whose  wisdom  and  that  of 
his  agent.  Commodore  Perry,  the  great  modern  nation  of 
Japan  owes  so  much.  These  men  stood  for  the  Union, 
against  both  Secessionists  and  Abolitionists  equally;  while 
the  vocal  warfare  of  the  latter  two  raged  as  though  civil  war 
had  already  begun  in  1851.  To  these  Whigs  a  destruction 
of  the  Union  by  either  seemed  impossible.  So  the  great 
Central  Railroad  construction  proceeded  under  President 
]\Iorehead's  direction ;  and  the  development  spirit  abroad 
resulted  in  the  Seaboard  and  Roanoke  line,  early  in  Decem- 
ber, again  opening  up  traffic  between  Weldon  and  Ports- 
mouth and  Norfolk ;  while  news  from  the  Census  that  North 
Carolina  had  2523  manufacturing  establishments  aided  in 


314  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

intensifying  the  hopeful  outlook.  President  Morehead's 
home  town  was  a  great  source  of  inspiration  at  this  time  in 
'educational  lines  also,  through  the  work  for  it  by  Calvin  H. 
Wiley  of  that  place.  By  March,  1852,  operations  were 
nearly  ready  to  begin  on  the  Gaston-Weldon  link  between 
the  Raleigh,  the  Petersburg,  the  Wilmington  and  the  Nor- 
folk lines.  Development  was  in  the  atmosphere  everywhere 
in  the  State,  while  the  building  of  the  Central  Railroad  pro- 
ceeded. So  it  continued,  even  in  June,  1852,  when  the  Whig 
National  Convention  put  up  Scott  and  Graham  as  their  can- 
didates, and  had  scarcely  done  so  when  the  telegraph  an- 
nounced the  death  of  the  great  Whig  leader,  Henry  Clay,  the 
idol  of  President  Morehead  for  so  many  years. 

It  was  time  North  Carolina  was  awake  on  transportation 
lines.  The  American  Raikvay  Times  of  Boston,  during  the 
Winter  of  1852-53  made  an  analysis  of  contemporary  rail- 
way conditions,  showing  that  Pennsylvania  was  then  first 
with  59  roads  while  North  Carolina  was  almost  last  with  3 ; 
New  York  was  first  in  number  of  miles  in  operation,  namely 
2129  miles,  while  North  Carolina  had  but  249;  Illinois  was 
first  in  amount  in  course  of  construction,  1698  miles,  while 
North  Carolina  had  but  223;  New  York  was  first  in  cost, 
$82,000,000,  to  North  Carolina's  $4,106,000.  The  New  York 
Erie  railroad  was  then  the  longest  in  the  world,  460  miles 
and  with  the  worst  record. 

On  June  4,  1853,  Governor  Reid,  in  accordance  with  the 
act  of  the  previous  Assembly  incorporating  both  "The  At- 
lantic and  North  Carolina  Railroad  Company"  and  "The 
North  Carolina  and  Western  Railroad  Company"  requested 
President  Morehead  to  have  surveys  made  from  Goldsboro 
to  Beaufort  and  from  Salisbury  to  the  Tennessee  line,  and 
the  President  at  once  ordered  it.  In  making  a  public  an- 
nouncement of  it  to  the  press  through  the  Patriot  of  June 
18th,  he  says,  among  other  things :  that  the  commerce  of  the 
world  was  to  be  had  at  Beaufort,  on  the  ocean  highway  within 
thirty  minutes,  a  great  place  to  coal ;  that  the  road  would 
be  soon  connected  with  other  lines  due  west  to  Memphis, 
and  then  it  was  only  a  question  of  time  until  still  other  lines 
would  go  west  from  there  to  San  Francisco,  for  the  Oriental 


BUILDS  NORTH  CAROLINA  RAILROAD  315 

trade.  He  said  nature  had  done  so  much  that  all  that  were 
needed  were  "men,  men  worthy  of  the  age  in  which  they 
live."  To  the  press  he  said :  "Onward !  and  you  take  the 
lead." 

A  few  days  previously  visitors  at  Beaufort  harbor  from 
Newbern  told  their  home  papers  of  development  at  Shep- 
pard's  Point :  The  Newbern  News  said  the  new  city  was  to 
be  located  there  and  the  three  original  owners  of  it  decided 
on  the  name  "Carolina  City ;"  but  now  there  were  more  in 
the  company,  among  whom  were  Governor  Morehead, 
Smith  &  Colby  of  New  York,  Mr.  Underwood  of  Fayette- 
ville  and  others.  They  were  surveying  the  plat  and  had  ar- 
ranged to  build  a  big  hotel  and  several  wharves.  No  build- 
ing was  to  be  more  than  one  story  high  and  of  brick  or 
stone — apparently  in  view  of  the  possible  great  storms  of 
this  coast.  The  central  street  to  the  main  wharf  was  to  be 
30  feet  wide  and  have  the  railroad  track  in  the  center.  The 
wharf  was  ultimately  to  be  built  out  to  White  Rock,  a  for- 
mation at  which  the  largest  vessels  could  tie  up.  The  writer 
had  no  doubt  that  it  was  to  become  another  Charleston,  Bal- 
timore or  Boston.  The  proprietors,  however,  soon  changed 
the  name  to  Morehead  City  in  honor  of  Governor  Morehead 
who  made  the  achievement  possible.' 

Of  Governor  Morehead's  relation  to  it,  he  had  the  fol- 
lowing, in  part,  to  say  in  a  public  letter  in  the  Greensboro 
Patriot  of  August  6,  1853:  "For  years  past,  my  attention 
has  been  directed  to  the  immeasurable  value,  to  North  Caro- 
lina, of  the  great  Harbor  of  Beaufort;  and  my  surprise  was, 
that  so  little  regard  was  paid  to  its  importance  by  those  who 
knew  it  better  than  I  did,  and  resided  in  its  immediate  vicin- 
ity.  Some    eighteen    months   since    [about    February    1, 

1852]  I  sent  a  friend  to  examine  the  Harbor,  who  commenced 
negotiations  for  an  interest  in  the  lands  at  Sheppard's  Point, 
which  eventuated  in  a  purchase  by  me  of  an  interest,  in  Oc- 
tober last — long  before  the  Railroad  Bill  was  introduced  into 
the  Legislature,  under  which  the  survey  is  about  to  be  made, 
and  when  no  one  knew  that  such  a  survey  would  be  ordered 

^  Greensboro  Patriot,   June   18,    1853. 


316  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

— and,  if  ordered,  that  I  would  be  connected  therewith.  I 
suppose  no  one  .  .  .  would  expect  me  to  abandon  that 
interest,  because  I  may  be  placed  in  a  delicate  position  rela- 
tive thereto,  by  the  subsequent  action  of  the  Legislature."^ 
In  addition  to  this,  he  took  occasion  to  publish  his  reply  to  a 
fellow  owner  at  Sheppard's  Point,  who  just  a  month  before, 
assumed  they  would  act  on  personal  advantage  in  the  matter : 
"The  first  matter  to  be  looked  to,"  Governor  Morehead  wrote 
in  part,  "is,  not  our  mutual  advantage,  but  the  great  interest 
of  the  State;  and  if  any  point  in  that  Harbor  shall  prove 
upon  examination,  to  have  better  water  and  be  more  acces- 
sible than  Sheppard's  Point,  in  which  I  have  some  interest,  I 
shall  disregard  Sheppard's  Point,  and  go  for  the  other."^ 

On  July  14,  1853,  the  regular  meeting  of  stockholders  of 
the  North  Carolina  Railroad  Company  occurred  at  Salisbury, 
with  Gov.  Wm.  A.  Graham  as  chairman.-  President  Alore- 
head's  report  showed  that  contractors  were  obligated  to  finish 
by  January  1,  1854,  but  that  unavoidable  delays  of  one  com- 
pany caused  him  to  extend  its  time  to  April.  There  were 
present,  either  by  proxy  or  in  person,  564  stockholders  rep- 
resenting 8148  shares.  To  one  familiar  with  political  his- 
tory and  conditions  of  North  Carolina,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
see  how  easily  political  interests  crept  into  these  meetings. 
Governor  Morehead  and  his  old  time  rival,  Judge  R.  M. 
Saunders,  were  the  favorites  of  the  two  elements,  and  their 
relative  standing  in  this  meeting  was  represented  by  the  vote 
for  them  for  a  vacant  directorship:  Morehead,  3958,  and 
Saunders,  3812,  with  62  scattering,  resulting  in  reelection  of 
Morehead,  both  as  director,  and  almost  unanimously  as 
President,  an  office  for  which  he  received  the  munificent  sum 
of  $2500.  The  four  divisions  of  the  line,  on  July  1,  1853, 
had  a  force  of  1158  men,  358  boys,  511  cars,  732  horses  and 
mules,  29  oxen,  16  track-layers,  besides  wagons  and  wheel- 
barrows. This  was  the  first  meeting  at  which  the  eight  new 
directors  representing  the  State's  shareholding  were  present, 
with  the  four  chosen  by  the  private  stockholders.  The  eight 
were  appointed  by  Governor  Reid,  Governor  Morehead  being 

^  Greensboro  Patriot,  Aug.  6,  1853. 

^  Track-laying  began  on  this  road  at  Goldsboro  on  Jane  23,   1853. 


BUILDS  NORTH  CAROLINA  RAILROAD  317 

one  of  the  stockholders'  four,  voting  80  shares,  probably 
his  own.  They  provided  for  immediate  survey  of  the  eastern 
and  western  extensions.  The  Carolina  Watchman,  of  July 
21st,  expressed  the  "gratification  felt  by  a  large  portion  of 
the  stockholders"  at  the  reelection  of  President  Alorehead. 
"He  has  filled  the  office  from  the  time  of  its  creation,  and 
has  been  over  the  operations  on  the  road  from  the  begin- 
ning." "The  place  which  Governor  Morehead  has  occupied, 
and  continues  to  fill,  is  a  difficult  one ;  and  we  presume  there 
is  no  one  in  the  State  who  could  hold  the  balances  on  such  an 
even  poise,  as  to  give  entire  satisfaction  to  every  man  con- 
cerned." The  editor  thought  the  source  of  difficulty  was 
some  stock-holders  becoming  contractors  and  not  making 
enough  money  out  of  it.  Its  political  character  was  illus- 
trated   in    September    when    the    Democratic    organ,    the 

Standard,  of  Raleigh,  intimated  Governor  M was  too 

anxious  to  have  the  railway  shops  at  Greensboro,  and  twitted 
him  on  a  desire  to  have  a  Danville,  Virginia,  connection — 
not  wanting  the  west  to  have  even  one  to  Raleigh  and  Wil- 
mington's two !  The  Patriot,  like  other  Whig  papers,  of 
course  defended  him :  "Where  is  the  man  in  the  state  of 
North  Carolina  who  could  have  done  so  much  to  set  on  foot 
and  carry  forward  this  gigantic  enterprise  as  Gov.  Morehead 
has  done?  He  is  being  tried  in  a  field  where  some  of  the 
stoutest  men  in  the  Union  have  been  broken  down.  He 
stands  just  at  that  point  of  internal  improvement  history  in 
North  Carolina,  where  other  men  in  other  states  have  stood, 
who  did  the  drudgery  and  endured  the  odium,  while  their 
successors  reaped  the  glory  of  success."  The  Patriot  added : 
"We  have  heard  Gov.  M ,  some  time  since,  casually  ex- 
press the  opinion  that  such  connection  would  be  advantage- 
ous to  the  Central  Road  by  bringing  on  to  it  more  trade 
than  it  would  carry  off  from  it."  But  there  was  under- 
stood among  all  that  there  had  been  a  tacit  agreement  with 
the  east  not  to  do  it ;  but  the  editor  warned  the  east  that  sug- 
gestions of  hypocrisy  might  defeat  their  own  aims.  The 
project  referred  to  was  an  extension  north  from  Greensboro 
to  the  Richmond  and  Danville  Railroad  which  was  being 
completed  towards  Danville  at  this  time,  but  with  a  slowness 


318  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

that  led  the  Danville  editors  to  recommend  to  that  road  the 
Morehead  system  of  letting  contracts  only  for  comparatively 
short  distances  and  to  a  larger  number  of  contractors.  The 
Patriot  editor  endorses  this  attitude  and  adds:  "there  has 
been  more  hard  work  done,  in  a  shorter  time,  and  with  less 
money,  on  the  North  Carolina  Central  Road  than  on  any 
other  road  ever  built."^ 

Asheville  asked  Governor  Morehead  to  attend  her  rail- 
road convention  on  August  25th,  and  his  reply  on  the  15th 
was  typical  of  his  spirit  and  method  at  this  period:  "I  am 
into  the  cause,"  he  wrote,  "soul  and  body,  and  if  the  state 
be  true  to  herself,  old  as  I  am,  I  yet  hope  to  live  to  see  her, 
by  her  improvements,  among  the  first  states  of  this  glorious 
Union."  "The  time  for  growling  legislation  is  past — the 
spirit  of  the  age  is  onward !  onward ! !"  He  pointed  the  way 
from  Beaufort  to  San  Francisco  and  the  trade  of  China  and 
South  America.  The  survey  was  then  complete  to  a  dozen 
miles  west  of  Morganton.  An  engineer  at  Asheville  said 
there  were  five  great  roads  over  the  mountains  in  the  eastern 
part  of  the  United  States  now  in  operation.  He  said  the 
Raleigh  and  Gaston  was  extended  to  Weldon  and  both  this 
road  and  the  Wilmington- Weldon  road  were  earning  7%  on 
their  investment,  clear  profit.  The  former  nearly  had  a 
branch  complete  from  Ridgway  to  Clarksville  on  the  Roa- 
noke ;  and  a  road  from  Fayetteville  to  the  coal  mine  is  begun. 
The  North  Carolina  Railroad,  begun  January  1,  1852,  "is 
now  more  than  two-thirds  graded,"  and  they  were  laying 
track  between  Goldsboro  and  Raleigh,  and  preparing  to 
lay  track  between  Charlotte  and  Salisbury.  The  forces 
would  meet  near  Greensboro  in  the  autumn  of  1855,  "thus 
presenting  the  only  case  in  the  United  States  in  which  the 
contractors  (and  native  contractors  and  native  laborers) 
have  executed  $600,000  worth  of  work  before  they  asked 
for  or  received  one  dollar;  and  the  only  case  in  which  a 
railroad  223  miles  long  has  been  put  into  full  and  successful 
operation,  in  four  and  one-half  years  from  the  time  when 


^  The  Greensboro  Patriot,  1st  Oct.,  1853.  The  best  single  brief  account  of 
the  North  Carolina  Railroad  is  Chief  Engineer  Gwynne's  last  report  in  the 
Raleigh  Register  of  March  12,  18S6. 


BUILDS  NORTH  CAROLINA  RAILROAD  319 

the  first  shovelful  of  earth  was  removed  by  the  hand  of 
man  from  its  native  resting  place.  North  Carolinians  may 
justly  pride  themselves  in  this  achievement.  The  contractors 
will,  in  the  fall  of  1855,  present  you,  not  a  flag  of  triumph, 
but  a  noble  monument  to  their  own  energy  and  skill — a 
well  constructed  railroad  complete  in  all  its  parts  and  adapted 
to  the  growing  demands  of  an  enterprising  public."^ 

During  the  winter  of  1852-3,  it  became  evident  that  the 
success  of  the  North  Carolina  Railroad  and  its  President 
and  the  consequent  prestige  of  both,  should  not  accrue  to  the 
Whigs,  who  had  failed  in  both  the  state  and  national  cam- 
paigns. Besides  President  Morehead  had  made  a  few 
speeches  for  Scott  and  Graham — in  vain,  to  be  sure;  but  it 
was  held  against  him,  even  though  Director  Saunders  had 
made  Democratic  speeches.  They  therefore  began  to  con- 
sider means  of  displacing  all  Whig  directors,  and  within  a 
year  and  a  half,  or  by  June,  1854,  the  last  two  Whigs  on 
the  state's  part  of  the  directory,  were  replaced  by  Demo- 
crats.^ They  pointed,  however,  to  the  fact  that  the  stock- 
holders elected  all  Whigs  on  their  part — which  could  not 
be  denied.  The  State  had  eight  and  the  stockholders  four ; 
but  even  so,  at  the  Salisbury  meeting  in  July,  1853,  President 
Morehead  was  re-elected  almost  unanimously.  Chief  En- 
gineer Gwynne's  salary  was  increased  from  $3000  to  $5000 
and  he  was  given  the  surveys  of  the  eastern  and  western  ex- 


^  The  Greensboro  Patriot,  Oct.  15,  1853.  Civil  Engineer  Theodore  S.  Gar- 
nett  at  the  Asheville  convention.  It  is  well  to  note  that  Virginia  had  over  a 
thousand  miles  of  railroad  in  use  at  this  time  in  seventeen  railroads,  from  one 

4  miles  long  to  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  with  242.  Its  longer  roads  were,  besides 
the  B.  &  C,  the  Virginia  Central  with  106  miles,  the  Richmond  and  Danville 
with  90  miles,  the  Seaboard  and  Roanoke  with  80  miles,  the  Richmond,  Fred- 
ericksburg &  Potomac  with  76  miles,  the  Orange  &  Alexandria  with  75,  the  Vir- 
ginia &  Tennessee  with  72,  the  Southside  with  63,  the  Petersburg  with  59,  etc. — 
Alexandria  Gazette. 

The  Gaston-Weldon  line  was  completed  in  April,   1853. 

-  It  is  amusing  to  see  the  Democratic  leader,  Editor  Holden  of  the  Raleigh 
Standard,  in  May  and  June,  industrially  praising  Calvin  Graves'  "commanding 
fame"  for  his  vote  that  secured  the  North  Carolina  charter — the  man  whose 
name  even  to  this  day,  is  mentioned  as  "never  getting  a  public  office  again"  for 
it!  Editor  Holden,  also,  on  May  27,  1854,  gravely  gave  a  list  of  six  Demo- 
crats who  "made  the  railroad:"  Graves,  Ashe,  Dobbins,  Gen.  Saunders,  and 
Governors  Reid  and  Bragg.  To  such  extremities  do  political  advantage  lure 
political  leaders!  What  these  particular  men  did,  under  the  circumstances  of 
the  moment,  no  one  can  nor  should  desire  to  deny;  but  the  Democrats  were 
afraid  of  the  Whig  leader  and  set  out  to  destroy  his  prestige,  as  a  party  ma- 
neuver. Editor  Holden  did  not  recall  to  his  readers  that  in  1848  43  Whigs  and 
17  Democrats  favored  it,  while  14  Whigs  and  38  Democrats  were  against  it  in 
the  House,  and  in  the  Senate  17  Whigs  and  6  Democrats  were  for  the  bill  and 

5  Whigs  and  17  Democrats  against  it;  60  Whigs  and  23  Democrats  for,  and 
19  Whigs  and  55  Democrats  against! 


320  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

tensions.  The  rumblings  of  opposition  were  much  like  those 
connected  with  the  famous  ice-house  of  1842;  and  about  as 
baseless.  They  thought  he  would  want  the  railway  shops  at 
Greensboro — certainly  about  as  near  central  to  the  line  as 
could  be,  if  it  were  true;  and  they  thought  he  still  wanted  the 
Danville  link,  and  the  editor  of  the  Patriot  (Greensboro) 
plainly  asserted  that  President  Morehead  had  said  not  long 
since  that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  and  bring  more  trade 
than  it  would  take  away. 

The  year  1854  saw  the  completion  of  the  Wilmington  & 
Manchester  Railroad  and  the  Western  Railroad  from  Fay- 
etteville  contracted  for ;  and  as  many  in  the  North  Carolina 
counties  below  Danville  had  stock  in  the  Richmond  &  Dan- 
ville road,  they  were  again  agitating  for  the  Danville  link, 
which  was  perfectly  natural,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
North  Carolina  Central  Railroad  was  finished  from  Char- 
lotte to  Concord  by  September  of  that  year,  the  first  pas- 
senger car  passing  over  it  on  September  6th.  It  was  at  the 
Directors'  meeting  on  the  30th  of  that  month,  at  Greensboro, 
that  it  was  decided  to  use  the  English  term  "station"  instead 
of  the  French  one  "depot,"  which  was  commonly  used  in 
some  states. 

Meanwhile  the  Atlantic  road  from  Goldsboro  to  Beaufort 
Harbor  had  obtained  all  subscriptions  necessary  by  its  meet- 
ing at  Newbern  on  June  21st,  and  secured  its  charter;  and 
by  December  16,  1854,  Chief  Engineer  Gwynne  reported 
the  route  from  Goldsboro  to  Sheppard's  Point,  Morehead 
City,  as  95.84  miles,  which  was  by  nearly  four  miles  the 
shortest  route.^  On  January  1,  1855,  President  Morehead 
announced  the  "Central"  as  open  for  business  from  Golds- 
boro to  "Durham's"  [Durham]  ;  and  by  the  20th,  the  As- 
sembly had  provided  for  charters  the  state's  part  in  both 
the  eastern  and  western  extensions.  The  first  freight  tariff 
had  been  published  in  October.  On  February  24,  1855, 
President  Morehead  announced  that  $1,000,000  more  stock 
authorized  by  the  Assembly  would  be  raised;  and  by  April 
1st,  trains  would  be  running  as  far  as  Hillsboro.    As  a  fact, 

^  Craven  County,  of  which  Newbern  is  the  county  reat,  took  the  $150,000 
necessary  to  get  the  charter. 


BUILDS  NORTH  CAROLINA  RAILROAD  321 

the  trains  were  running  to  Mebane  by  June  30th,  about  32 
miles  east  of  Greensboro,  while  they  had  reached  Lexington 
at  the  same  time  about  35  miles  west  of  Greensboro,  showing 
that  the  line  would  undoubtedly  meet  near  the  latter  place 
soon. 

With  the  completion  of  the  North  Carolina  Central  Rail- 
road practically  a  fact,  and  because  of  Governor  Morehead's 
interest  in  the  eastern  extension,  as  well  as  because  of  the 
opposition  politically,  he  resigned  on  July  12th,  both  as  a  di- 
rector and  as  President,  and  his  old  time  leader  of  the  '20s, 
Charles  F.  Fisher  of  Salisbury,  was  chosen  his  successor. 
This  was  followed  on  August  16,  1855,  by  the  stockholders 
of  the  Atlantic  road  deciding  on  Sheppard's  Point  as  the 
ocean  terminal,  that  is,  IMorehead  City,  and  contracts  for 
building  the  road  were  assigned,  26  miles  to  Governor  More- 
head  and  16  miles  to  a  Mr.  Wood. 

It  was  on  the  following  December  14,  1855,  that  the 
"Pello,"  the  first  railway  engine,  entered  Greensboro,  and  the 
16th  of  that  month  set  for  a  Jubilee  and  celebration  of  the 
event,  with  Governor  Morehead  as  the  chief  speaker.  By 
this  time  the  meaning  of  this  great  work,  with  actual  con- 
struction begun,  both  of  an  ocean  port  and  railway  from  the 
sea  to  Tennessee,  was  beginning  to  illumine  the  minds  of 
everybody.  A  line  of  fine  steamers  was  put  on  Pamlico 
Sound  from  Beaufort  and  Morehead  City  to  Washington 
on  the  Neuse  river,  one  boat  named  the  "Astoria"  and  the 
other  the  "Governor  Morehead,"  and  were  in  operation  in 
August,  1855,  when  Morehead  City  was  decided  upon  as 
the  ocean  terminal  of  the  Atlantic  road. 

The  approach  of  the  meeting  of  the  two  ends  of  the 
Central  road  near  Greensboro  caused  a  western  correspon- 
dent of  the  Patriot  to  voice  a  general  feeling  among  Whigs, 
that  if  the  Whig  ticket  next  time,  were  "Fillmore  and  More- 
head,"  instead  of  "Scott  and  Graham,"  it  might  not  fail. 
"Individually,"  he  wrote,  in  the  Greensboro  Patriot  of  De- 
cember 21,  1855,  "I  would  rather  hail  John  Morehead  as 
President  of  the  Senate  than  anyone  now  on  the  face  of  the 
globe."  The  editor  seconds  the  nomination  with :  "There 
is  no  purer  politician  in  the  Union,  and,  none,  we  venture  to 


322  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

say,  who  would  more  thoroughly  command  the  respect  of 
the  people  North  and  South  and  whose  influence  would  be 
felt  so  sensibly  for  good." 

The  enthusiasm  was  at  its  highest  on  the  29th  of  the  next 
month,  January,  1856 :  "On  Thursday  last,"  said  the  Patriot 
of  February  1st,  "about  3  o'clock  P.  M.  the  last  bar  of  iron 
was  laid  on  the  North  Carolina  Railroad.  The  meeting  of 
the  two  ends  took  place  some  4^  miles  west  of  this  place. 
After  their  work  was  completed,  the  hands  of  the  two  com- 
panies got  into  the  cars  and  rode  down  to  Greensboro,  amid 
the  happy  greetings  and  rejoicings  of  our  citizens.  And 
after  a  half  hour  of  hilarity  they  returned  to  Jamestown  to 
enjoy  some  of  the  inner  man  comforts."  The  next  day  mail 
and  passenger  trains  made  their  first  trip  and  the  following 
schedule  was  announced :  "On  and  after  Thursday,  the  31st 
day  of  January,  1856,"  etc.,  to  the  effect  that  trains,  mail 
and  passenger,  would  leave  Goldsboro  at  2.10  A.  M.  and  ar- 
rive at  Charlotte  at  6.04  P.  M. ;  and  leave  Charlotte  at  5 
P.  M.,  reaching  Goldsboro  at  8.48  A.  M.,  the  absence  of  any 
reference  to  sleeping  accommodations  being  a  part  of  the 
conceptions  of  the  period. 

By  the  following  May  [1856]  news  of  the  progress  of  the 
Atlantic  road  began  to  appear.  The  Neivbern  Neivs  of  May 
2nd,  said  that  a  force  of  600  men  and  130  horses  were  at 
work  on  Governor  Morehead's  section  of  the  Atlantic  road, 
which  was  in  immediate  charge  of  Mr.  G.  P.  Evans,  and  that 
track-laying  would  begin  at  the  "Point"  in  Morehead  City 
in  a  month  or  so.  It  also  said  that  Edward  Stanly  and  Mr. 
C.  B.  Wood  were  likewise  contractors.  Seven  days  later 
it  was  announced  in  the  Patriot  that  the  Richmond  &  Dan- 
ville road's  completion  to  Danville  was  to  be  celebrated  with 
a  barbecue  on  June  19th  next.  The  July  meeting  of  the 
North  Carolina  Central  stockholders,  on  motion  of  Ex-Gov- 
ernor Swain,  disapproved  of  the  running  of  Sunday  trains 
on  their  line — and  presumably  the  smoke  of  "Pello"  and  its 
fellow  engines,  did  not  thereafter  contaminate  the  Sabbath 
atmosphere  of  North  Carolina.  The  atmosphere  of  the 
Piedmont  and  mountains  was  stimulating  the  survey  of  the 
Western  North  Carolina  Railroad,  as  the  western  extension 


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BUILDS  NORTH  CAROLINA  RAILROAD  323 

from  Salisbury  was  called,  and  over  17  miles  through  IMor- 
ganton  was  completed  by  the  autumn  of  that  year,  when  the 
"Land  of  the  Sky,"  which  it  was  to  make  accessible,  was  in 
its  glory. 

The  dreams  of  Archibald  DeBow  Murphy  and  President 
Joseph  Caldwell  were  in  process  of  realization.  Rails  were 
slowly  creeping  from  Cape  Lookout's  harbor  to  the  passes 
of  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains  on  the  Tennessee  line.  Not 
horses,  as  the  "Carlton"  papers  proposed,  but  steam  loco- 
motive engines  were  already  flying  with  passengers,  mail  and 
freight  over  a  considerable  portion  of  the  line ;  while  the 
foundations  of  a  great  ocean  port  were  being  laid  in  Beau- 
fort Harbor.  Not  only  so  but  these  nearly  realized  dreams 
— realized  by  their  old  pupil  and  executive — were  being  ex- 
tended by  John  Motley  Morehead  to  include  a  transconti- 
nental line  to  Memphis  or  the  Ohio  and  the  Pacific  coast, 
with  connection  with  the  Oriental  nations  at  the  one  end 
of  the  line,  and  steamship  lines  at  the  other  to  connect  with 
New  York,  the  West  Indies  and  South  American  ports  and 
those  of  Europe  at  Liverpool.  Such  were  the  vision  and 
first  steps  of  achievement  of  John  Motley  Morehead  in  the 
autumn  of  1856. 


XV 

Building 

The  Eastern  Extension  and  an  Ocean  Port 

More  HEAD  City 

and 

Whig  Leadership  Again 

1856 

In  the  early  '50s,  the  Democrats  had  been  calHng  them- 
selves the  Democratic  Republicans  or  Republican  Democrats, 
thus  showing  a  desire  to  capture  the  name  "Republican"  and 
all  that  it  then  signified.  With  it  they  won  not  only  the  State 
ticket,  but  pushed  out  the  Whig  National  candidates,  Scott 
and  Graham,  by  the  narrow  margin  of  603  votes  in  North 
Carolina.  Neither  Scott  nor  Graham  had  the  power  to  hold 
the  "Old  North  State"  in  the  Whig  column,  while,  in  many 
northern  states,  the  Abolitionist  vote  was  also  cutting  down 
the  Whig  majorities.  In  the  mid-winter  of  1853-4,  the 
Guilford  county  Whigs,  in  the  presence  of  this  sad  experi- 
ence with  the  Orange  county  leader,  determined  to  put  the 
political  harness  back  on  "The  Old  Whig  War  Horse," 
President  Morehead  of  the  North  Carolina  Railroad,  who 
was  accustomed  to  victory  in  all  he  undertook  and  especially 
Whig  victories.  On  January  2,  1854,  at  their  Whig  meeting 
in  Greensboro  they  both  passed  broad  Whig  resolutions, 
among  them  being  one  for  a  Bank  of  the  United  States,  and 
selected  President  Morehead  to  head  their  delegation  to  the 
State  Convention  and  assumed  the  name  "Republican 
Whigs."  The  Whig  State  Convention  that  followed  on 
February  21st,  nominated  General  Alfred  Dockery  of  Rich- 
mond county,  as  candidate  for  Governor  on  a  "Republican 
Whig"  ticket.  General  Dockery  failed  at  the  August  elec- 
tions by  2095,  however ;  and,  as  if  this  were  not  bad  enough, 

324 


A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  325 

President  Morehead's  railroad  had  its  first  collision  on  the 
following  October  17th,  about  ten  miles  east  of  Raleigh,  due 
to  a  negro  flag-man  sleeping  at  his  post. 

The  years  1855-6  saw  a  breaking  up  of  the  old  parties. 
For  some  four  years,  in  certain  parts  of  the  United  States, 
where  foreign,  and  especially  Roman  Catholic  immigration, 
was  so  great,  a  secret  political  society,  whose  members  met 
inquiry  by  saying:  "I  know  Nothing,"  grew  under  various, 
names  until  in  1855  it  carried  four  New  England  States,  \ 
New  York,  Kentucky  and  California.  This  drew  from  the 
Whig  party  quite  largely,  under  the  name  "American  Party." 
The  Abolitionists  also  drew  largely  from  the  Whigs  and  at 
Philadelphia,  in  1856,  nominated  John  C.  Fremont.  The 
Whigs  of  North  Carolina  turned  to  the  "American  Party" 
and  had  their  State  Convention  on  October  19,  1855,  at 
Raleigh,  at  which  they  emphasized  the  Constitution  and 
Union,  and  provided  for  a  general  gubernatorial  nomination 
Convention  on  April  10th  at  Greensboro.  To  this  move-"^ 
met  Governor  Morehead  gave  his  hearty  allegiance  and  at 
the  April  meeting  at  Guilford  Battle-Ground,  he  presided. 
For  Governor  there  was  nominated  John  A.  Gilmer  of 
Greensboro;  and  they  nailed  to  the  mast-head  the  names 
of  "Fillmore  and  Donelson,"  the  "American"  party  national 
candidates.  In  this  atmosphere  those  who  adhered  to  the 
old  party  called  themselves,  proudly,  "Old  Line  Whigs,"  and 
there  was  a  considerable  sentiment,  in  North  Carolina,  to 
hold  their  old  organization  together,  and  Governor  More- 
head,  at  least,  and  his  followers  were  inclined  to  persuade 
them  to  support  their  own  old  President,  Millard  Fillmore, 
whose  able  contrast  to  their  apostate  Whig  President, 
Tyler,  awakened  in  them  a  great  affection. 

On  September  19,  1856,  the  Whigs  of  Guilford  County 
met  at  Greensboro,  with  Governor  Morehead  as  Chair- 
man, and  as  he  was  already  a  State  delegate-at-large  to  the 
Whig  National  Convention  at  Baltimore,  he  was  authorized 
to  appoint  ten  delegates  to  that  meeting,  which  was  set  for 
September  17th.  This  "Old  Line  Whig  Convention"  met  in  \ 
the  hall  of  the  Maryland  Institute  on  that  day,  and  twenty- 
two  states  were  represented:    1.  Of  the  distinctive  northern 


326  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

states  were  Illinois,  Indiana,  Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  New  York, 
Connecticut,  Massachusetts,  New  Jersey,  Delaware  and  Min- 
nesota ;  the  border  states  were  Maryland,  Kentucky  and  Mis- 
souri;  while  the  Southern  states  were  Virginia  (including 
what  is  now  West  Virginia),  North  Carolina,  Tennessee, 
Georgia,  Alabama,  Florida,  Mississippi,  Arkansas,  and 
Louisiana,  with  District  of  Columbia.  The  enthusiasm  was 
very  great,  and  the  Virginia  and  North  Carolina  delegates 
found  it  necessary  to  call  for  more  room.  David  Paul 
Brown,  the  brilliant  lawyer  from  Philadelphia,  was  chairman 
of  the  organizing  committee  and  they  made  Hon.  Edward  J. 
Bates  of  Missouri  President  of  the  Convention,  and  Gover- 
nor Morehead,  Governor  Graham  and  others  were  on  the 
platform  with  him.  There  were  many  speeches  and  the 
resolutions,  among  other  things,  stood  for  the  Constitution 
and  Union  and  deprecated  the  two  main  parties,  one  of 
which  avowedly  represented  only  sixteen  northern  States 
and  the  others  the  South  chiefly.  They  approved  the  can- 
didates, Fillmore  and  Donelson,  but  ignored  the  doctrines  of 
the  "American"  party.  In  one  of  the  speeches,  namely,  that 
by  Mr.  Banks  of  North  Carolina,  the  speaker  said :  *T  have 
consulted  my  political  father,  him  for  whom  I  cast  my  first 
vote  in  1840 — Governor  Morehead."  [Applause.]  Among 
calls  for  various  speakers  were  repeated  demands  for  Gov- 
ernor Morehead,  and  probably  his  most  notable  speech  in 
his  whole  life  was  this  at  the  "Old  Line  Whig"  Convention 
at  Baltimore,  in  the  Hall  of  Maryland  Institute  on  the  even- 
ing of  Wednesday,  September  17,  1856.  It  made  his  name 
ring  throughout  the  land,  for  it  was  prophetic  of  the  greatest 
tragedy  in  the  life  of  himself  and  his  country. 

"Mr.  President,"  said  he,  as  he  rose  to  respond  to  re- 
peated calls,  "I  cannot  but  respond  to  the  call  which  has  been 
made  upon  me  on  this  occasion.  It  would  be  strange  if  I 
did  not  feel  any  interest  in  the  meeting  of  the  Whig  party 
here.  The  very  stars  may  fly  from  their  orbits,  meteors  may 
fly  through  space  and  fade  away  to  mere  nothingness,  but 
so  long  as  I  live  I  will  be  found  revolving  around  the  great 
center  of  Whig  principles.  Eight  years  ago,  Mr.  President,  I 
had  the  honor  to  fill  the  seat  you  now  occupy." 


A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  327 

"The  President:    Did  you  use  this  gavel? 

"Mr.  Morehead :  I  do  not  know  as  it  was  that  very  one. 
But  the  one  I  did  use  brought  Millard  Fillmore  into  the 
Presidency  once,  and  I  challenge  you  to  do  the  same  thing 
again.  [Laughter  and  applause.]  The  great  Whig  Captain, 
Henry  Clay,  was  then  up  before  us  for  the  Presidency.  My 
State  was  unanimous  for  him ;  we  held  out  so  long  as  there 
was  any  hope,  until  State  after  State  gave  way  and  still  the 
Chairman  of  her  delegation  voted  'Clay'  to  the  last.  [Ap- 
plause.] It  was  the  last  time  we  could  hope  to  bring  our 
gallant  chieftain  forward,  the  last  opportunity  of  showing 
that  republics  are  not  ungrateful ;  and  I  never  gave  him  up 
until  absolute  necessity '  compelled  me  to  do  it.  But  that 
meeting  gave  us  another  Whig  chieftain,  under  whose  banner 
the  Whigs  fought  as  did  our  soldiers  at  Buena  Vista. 

"In  that  Convention  I  looked  to  Massachusetts  to  stand 
by  North  Carolina,  as  we  stood  by  her  in  1776.  One  month 
after  British  soldiers  shed  American  blood  upon  American 
soil  on  the  19th  of  April,  1775,  the  people  of  the  Old  North 
State  proclaimed  to  the  world  that  they  were  a  free  and 
independent  people  and  would  no  longer  submit  to  British 
domination,  and  pledged  our  lives,  our  fortunes,  and  our 
sacred  honors  to  protect  the  liberties  we  claimed  as  our  right. 
I  looked  to  Massachusetts  to  stand  by  us  for  the  second  in 
command,  a  distinguished  son  of  hers  now  no  more.  But 
the  choice  of  that  convention  was  against  me,  and  they 
selected  that  man  whose  name  is  now  proposed  to  us.  I  had 
seen  him  but  once  before  that  time,  and  but  once  or  twice 
since,  and  then  but  for  a  few  minutes.  When  we  went  into 
that  campaign,  the  spirits  of  our  friends  were  very  much 
subdued,  when  we  found  that  our  glorious  old  captain  had 
been  set  aside,  and  it  took  us  some  time  to  gather  up  our 
soldiers.  But,  in  a  few  weeks,  we  went  into  the  campaign 
and  nO'  Whigs  fought  more  gallantly  under  the  banner  of 
Taylor  and  Fillmore  than  the  soldiers  of  North  Carolina, 
and  we  triumphed  in  the  Old  North  State. 

"But  Providence  in  its  dispensation  soon  removed  our 
head  from  us,  and  Millard  Fillmore  occupied  his  place. 
Every  eye  was  upon  him,  and  when  I  witnessed  the  position 


328  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

he  assumed  then,  saw  him  take  the  stand  of  an  American 
statesman  entertaining  broad  views  of  government,  working 
for  the  whole  Union,  setting  aside  his  old  cherished  early 
prejudices,  and  take  the  Constitution  for  his  guide  and  sole 
support,  in  defiance  of  the  prejudices  of  either  section,  I  saw 
in  him  the  right  man  to  rule  over  this  great  and  glorious 
people.  I  no  longer  hesitated  in  believing  that  Millard  Fill- 
more was  the  man  the  Whigs  of  the  United  States  should 
support.  He  gave  us  one  of  the  most  glorious  administra- 
tions this  government  has  ever  been  blessed  with.  He  re- 
tired from  the  Presidential  chair  with  the  plaudits  of  all  good 
men  who  were  honest  in  the  expression  of  their  convictions. 
And  how  did  he  leave  our  once  distracted  country?  In 
peace,  in  prosperity  and  happiness,  tending  in  every  respect 
toward  that  great  destiny,  which,  I  hope,  we  will  yet  reach. 
He  left  this  country  to  visit  foreign  climes,  and  what  do  we 
see?  In  the  space  of  four  short  years,  a  country  once 
abounding  in  everything  pleasant,  happy  and  peaceful,  with 
prospects  brilliant  as  the  rising  sun,  has,  under  Democratic 
rule,  become  involved  in  discord,  brother's  hands  dipped  in 
brother's  blood,  women  and  children  fleeing  from  the  ruins 
of  their  once  happy  homes,  in  one  section  of  the  country, 
rebellion  stalking  abroad  at  noon-day,  and  the  great  gov- 
ernment of  the  United  States  unable  to  quell  an  insignificant 
insurrection  or  to  give  protection  to  the  humblest  portion  of 
the  nation.  Civil  discord  and  dismay  are  spreading  over  the 
whole  country.  Patriots,  true  patriots,  are  looking  around 
them  to  find  where  they  shall  flee  for  protection. 

"To  whom  can  they  look  but  to  him  who,  in  1850, 
Clay  and  Webster,  and  all  good  and  true  men,  rallied  around. 
In  vain  they  look  for  Clay  and  Webster;  they  are  gone 
to  'that  bourne  from  which  no  traveller  returns.'  But  there 
is  Millard  Fillmore!  [Cheers.]  This  distracted  country 
casts  her  eyes  across  the  waters  and  invites  him  once 
more  to  return  to  her  shores,  and  with  outstretched  arms 
she  welcomes  him  back.  And  where  is  the  man  who  has 
more  moral  courage  to  march  up  to  the  discharge  of  his  duty 
than  has  Millard  Fillmore?     I  will  stand  up  in  his  support, 


A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  329 

and  if  I  must  fall,  I  will  fall  with  my  winding  sheet  the 
glorious  constellation  of  31  States." 

"Mr.  President,  you  will  pardon  me  for  saying,  that  I 
regretted  to  hear  from  your  lips  of  wisdom  on  yesterday  a 
reference  to  the  fragments  of  the  Whig  party.  The  Whig 
party  in  fragments!     The  Whig  party  is  dead! 

"The  President:    No  longer  so.     [Applause.] 

"Mr.  Morehead :  No,  sir ;  no  longer  is  the  Whig  party 
dead.  Here  are  around  me  evidences  that  the  Whigs  are 
alive,  and  so  long  as  the  goddess  of  liberty  has  residence 
iipon  this  terraqueous  globe,  Whigs  will  live.  They  lived  be- 
fore the  revolution ;  they  brought  us  to  be  the  great  people 
we  now  are.  The  glorious  Whig  portrait  of  George  Wash- 
ington, whose  genius  presides  on  all  occasions  where  Whigs 
meet  together  in  behalf  of  their  glorious  country,  who  led 
the  glorious  stars  and  stripes  in  victory  through  many  a 
bloody  field  of  battle — that  glorious  old  Whig  and  his  prin- 
ciples can  never  die.  It  is  true  the  Whig  party  were  defeated 
four  years  ago ;  and  it  was  a  melancholy  defeat  for  the  coun- 
try ;  she  has  regretted  it  ever  since  in  sackcloth  and  ashes ! 
Our  people  were  deluded,  and  we  stood  aside  and  gave  them 
an  opportunity  for  a  sober  second  thought,  and  they  have 
had  a  dozen  sober  second  thoughts  since.  They  have  be- 
gun to  repent  of  their  evil  delusion,  and  will  it  their  interest 
and  duty  to  fall  into  our  ranks  and  aid  us  in  restoring  this 
country  to  its  former  condition  of  peace  and  prosperity. 

"What  is  the  present  condition  of  the  country,  and  what 
has  been  its  condition  whenever  the  Democrats  have  been  in 
power?  Spoils,  spoils  have  been  their  cry.  If  they  would 
be  content  with  the  spoils,  we  would  let  them  have  the  spoils, 
though  the  overflowing  treasury  of  the  last  four  years  has 
been  enough  to  corrupt  any  people  but  Americans,  and  it 
has  corrupted  a  portion  of  them.  But  down  South  they  are 
proclaiming,  as  they  proclaim  everywhere  else,  that  there  is 
no  hope  for  the  country  but  in  Democracy;  that  Fillmore 
has  no  strength;  that  none  but  the  Democrats  can  save  the 
South  from  the  Black  Republicans  of  the  North.  They  have 
lashed  the  political  ocean  into  a  tempest  and  have  madly 
leaped  into  it;  and  now  they  come  to  us  and  cry,  'help  me 


330  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Cassius,  or  I  sink.  [Cheers.]  Let  the  ambitious  Caesar  go 
down;  it  were  better  that  he  should  be  lost  and  Rome  be 
saved,  than  that  Rome  should  sink  and  the  tyrant  live. 

"I  have  been  amused  at  the  course  the  Democracy  have 
been  pursuing.  I  remember  that  in  1840,  it  was  said  that 
our  gallant  old  chieftain  from  Ohio  had  been  placed  in  the 
hands  of  a  committee  and  permitted  to  say  nothing  but  what 
had  first  passed  through  their  lips.  I  should  like  to  know 
who  is  the  spokesman  of  the  candidate  of  the  Democratic 
party  now?  What  has  become  of  Jimmy  Buchanan?  The 
last  account  I  had  of  him,  he  had  gone  into  the  Cincinnati 
platform  [laughter]  and  bid  good-bye  to  the  friends  of 
James  Buchanan.  It  will  be  with  him  as  with  their  last 
President,  who  was  so  green  as  to  suppose  that  the  Demo- 
cratic party  meant  what  they  said  by  their  platform.  When 
they  began  to  tear  up  the  planks,  he  nailed  them  down  again 
with  his  veto  nails,  but  they  tore  them  up  again  and  scattered 
them  to  the  winds.  And  so  it  will  be  with  James  Buchanan. 
If  he  can  stick  to  the  platform,  it  will  be  only  on  some  lonely 
plank,  like  the  people  of  Lost  Island  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico — 
on  the  plank  of  the  Ostend  manifesto,  going  down  the  Gulf 
to  see  how  Cuba  is.  [Laughter  and  applause.]  Who  is  his 
spokesman  now?  How  shall  we  address  a  question  to  him? 
Where  is  he?  Who  is  he?  What  is  he?  So  far  as  he  is 
concerned,  he  is  out  of  the  question. 

"There  is  another  candidate  in  the  field,  Mr.  Freemont. 
Who  entitles  him  to  the  confidence  of  the  people  of  this 
great  nation?  But  the  Democrats  are  the  last  men  who 
should  find  fault  with  him;  their  course  has  brought  him 
into  the  field.  They  set  the  eminent  example  in  1852  and  he 
is  now  following  in  their  footsteps.  They  then  brought  forth 
a  candidate  preeminently  distinguished  for  his  equestrian 
performances  in  Mexico,  and  the  Black  Republicans  have 
brought  forth  a  man  perhaps  a  little  more  distinguished  in 
the  same  way.  He  is  a  fast  man,  can,  perhaps,  ride  farther 
than  any  other  man  in  a  day,  but  if  placed  at  the  helm  of 
government  would  drive  it  to  destruction  at  a  gallop.  Now, 
I  am  not  willing  to  entrust  him  with  that  command.  Give 
me  our  old  helmsman ;  a  man  who  took  command  of  the  ship 


A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  331 

of  State  once  before  when  she  was  tossed  to  and  fro,  and 
brought  her  safely  into  port,  with  the  aid  of  such  men  as 
Webster  and  Clay  and  others.  He  is  the  man  for  me;  to 
him  I  would  trust  our  ship  of  state. 

"What  shall  we  do  when  we  leave  this  Assembly?  Here- 
tofore we  have  had  a  sad  lot  of  our  own ;  but  now  we  have 
not.  Heretofore  the  Democrats  have  said  we  were  for  the 
spoils,  when  they  were  after  the  same  thing  themselves.  But 
now  we  are  not  for  office,  we  have  strictly  no  Whig  candi- 
date in  the  field,  we  form  an  outside  body,  we  have  de- 
termined to  support  a  tried  man,  whom  we  believe  will  give 
more  peace  and  prosperity  to  this  country  than  any  other 
man.  We  have  re-elected  him  because  we  believe  he  is  en- 
titled to  our  confidence.  Why  should  we  not  take  him  up? 
Because,  it  is  said,  he  is  the  candidate  of  another  party! 
Why,  sir,  if  the  Democratic  party  had  nominated  such  a  man 
as  George  Washington,  would  you  not  support  him?  Had 
they  taken  up  Millard  Fillmore,  should  you  not  then  sup- 
port him?  And  if  the  American  party  will  stand  by  us,  we 
will  elect  Millard  Fillmore.  [Cheers.]  And  if  they  will  not, 
I  give  them  notice  now  that  we  Whigs  intend  to  elect  him 
anyhow.  [Cheers.]  If  they  do  not  like  our  man,  let 
them  get  a  better  one  if  they  can.  [Laughter.]  We  want  a 
Whig  President,  and  we  will  have  a  Whig  President.  One 
thing  is  certain,  if  he  be  President  at  all,  he  will  be  an  Ameri- 
can President,  and  that  is  what  we  want. 

"Now  about  geographical  discrimination.  I  want  but 
one  geographical  limit — let  us  be  bounded  by  the  Lakes  on 
the  North,  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  the  Rio  Grande  at  the 
South,  the  Atlantic  on  the  East  and  the  Pacific  on  the  West, 
and  within  that  let  us  all  be  a  glorious  brotherhood  of 
Americans.  [Cheers.]  Talk  about  the  North  and  the 
South !  Where  is  the  /North  ?  Is  there  any  North  in  this 
glorious  republic?  Which  is  the  Northern  part  of  your 
Constitution  and  which  the  Southern?  What  part  in  this 
great  republic  was  the  land  of  Washington,  Adams,  Frank- 
lin and  id  onine  genus f  Shall  I  not  bequeath  to  my  children, 
as  my  father  bequeathed  to  me,  that  land  cemented  by  the 
blood  of  Warren?    Shall  I  not  look  upon  the  battle  fields  of 


Z2>2  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Lexington,  Bunker  Hill  and  Boston  as  my  country?  I  tell 
you  I  will,  or  die  in  the  attempt  to  look  upon  them  a  such. 
[Cheers.]  Shall  not  the  land  of  Sumner  and  Marion  be  my 
land?  Aye,  sir,  as  long  as  time  shall  last  it  shall  be  so. 
If  Wilson  and  Sumner  do  not  like  me  to  have  a  foothold  in 
a  State  with  them,  then  let  them  leave  the  sacred  land  of 
]\Iassachusetts,  for  I  will  not  give  it  up.  If  Greeley  and 
Beecher  seek  to  elbow  me  from  the  State  of  New  York,  they 
will  find  hard  elbowing,  and  they  will  have  to  go  out  them- 
selves, I  never  will  consent  that  one  foot  of  the  soil  of  this 
glorious  Union  shall  ever  be  considered  anything  else  but 
'My  own,  my  native  land !'  [Applause.]  He  who  expects 
me  to  fight  for  the  North  against  the  South,  or  for  the  East 
against  the  West,  will  find  it  with  me  as  they  will  find  it 
with  our  glorious  leader ;  they  will  be  mistaken  in  their  man  ; 
I  am  for  the  whole  country.  Go  to  Maine,  and  where  is 
Massachusetts?  At  the  South.  Go  to  Massachusetts  and 
where  is  the  gallant  state  of  Maryland  ?  At  the  South.  Go 
to  Maryland,  and  where  is  North  Carolina?  Aye,  North! — 
thank  God,  North  Carolina!  [Applause.]  We  have  a 
North  under  the  blazing  sun  of  the  South :  and  yet  they  say 
they  will  have  this  North. 

"Dissolve  this  Union!  Let  the  fiery  hotspurs  of  the 
South  design  it  when  they  may ;  let  the  plotting  traitors  of 
the  North  design  it  when  they  will ;  let  the  pulpits  of  the  liv- 
ing God  send  forth  their  Sharpe's  rifles,  and  their  powder 
and  bullets;  but  the  people  of  the  Union  will  not  let  them 
disturb  it.  [Applause.]  With  your  Constitution  in  one 
hand  and  your  Bible  in  the  other,  and  with  patriotism  in 
your  hearts,  you  will  prove  victorious  against  all  the  traitors 
that  ever  trod  the  earth.    [Cheers  and  applause.] 

"Dissolve  this  Union!  Sir,  it  never  can  be  dissolved 
until  the  blood  of  the  heroes  of  '76  has  been  so  polluted  and 
diluted  that  the  last  drop  of  it  has  left  us.  While  there  is 
a  spark  of  the  blood  of  '76  in  American  veins,  so  long  will 
this  Union  stand!  [Applause.]  Dissolve  this  Union! 
Never,  never,  never!  Why,  sir,  you  may  invite  all  the  for- 
eign foes  into  our  land ;  you  may  robe  our  cities  in  flames ; 
make  our  homes  smoking  ruins,  and  send  our  wives  and 


A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  333 

children  screaming  through  the  streets,  but  when  our  coun- 
try appears  as  if  in  the  last  gasp  of  expiring  agony,  a  mighty 
voice  like  the  sound  of  a  trumpet  will  speak  forth,  proclaim- 
ing liberty  and  union  as  the  watch-word,  and  that  will  save 
the  Union !      [Applause.] 

"Mr.  President,  I  was  gratified  to  hear  you  say  yesterday 
that  you  came  a  thousand  miles  and  would  have  come  three 
thousand,  if  necessary,  to  meet  your  brethren  and  friends  in 
this  convention.  I  was  delighted,  too,  yesterday,  to  hear  the 
eloquent  voice  of  my  friend  from  Massachusetts,  who  eight 
years  ago  stood  side  by  side  with  me ;  it  showed  me  that  the 
North  is  not  so  far  from  some  of  us  as  some  people  imagine, 
but  that  there  is  a  bond  of  brotherhood  which  connects  this 
Union  together  and  will  never  permit  it  to  be  rent  asunder. 
And  permit  me  here,  Mr.  President,  to  advert  also  to  a  re- 
mark made  by  yourself  last  night  in  private  conversation, 
when  you  said  that  this  country  was  knit  and  rivetted  to- 
gether by  the  great  Mississippi,  binding  degree  of  latitude 
with  degree  of  latitude,  that  will  never  allow  this  great 
Union  to  be  severed.      [Applause.] 

"And  let  me  say  to  the  Whigs  assembled  here,  let  us  go 
home  and  tell  our  friends,  that  we  have  stood  by  and  seen 
the  tricks  and  fanaticism  of  those  who  have  brought  this 
crisis  upon  the  country,  and  we  have  said  not  a  word,  but 
given  them  full  swing  in  their  mad  course,  letting  them  cut 
their  own  throats  as  much  as  they  pleased.  [Laughter  and 
applause.]  Perhaps  it  may  purify  the  country  to  let  them 
go  on  in  such  a  career  of  madness  and  folly.  The  towering 
form  of  Gen.  Scott  sent  into  Kansas  would  have  quieted 
that  distracted  people  and  secured  peace.  [Applause.]  But, 
sir,  no  political  capital  would  have  been  made  out  of  it.  And 
another  thing:  Who  is  the  prime  minister  of  this  admin- 
istration ? 

"The  man  who,  perhaps  more  than  any  other,  has  at- 
tempted to  worry  that  great  chieftain.  He  was  Secretary 
of  War  when  Gen.  Scott  was  sent  to  Mexico  without  orders 
necessary  to  fulfill  his  mission,  which  occasioned  the  saying 
about  the  hasty  plate  of  soup.  New  York  has  some  bad 
men   mixed    up    with    her   good    men,    like    other    States. 


334  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

[Laughter.]  Gen.  Scott  waited  month  after  month,  impa- 
tient to  take  Vera  Cruz,  and  at  length  he  had  to  strip  the 
ships  of  their  guns,  and  in  spite  of  the  administration  worry- 
ing at  his  heels,  he  went  and  took  the  city  by  storm — he 
took  it,  to  use  his  own  emphatic  language,  with  a  fire  in  front 
and  in  the  rear.  [Laughter  and  applause.]  The  conquest 
he  achieved  in  Mexico  was  one  that  was  never  excelled  in 
the  records  of  this  country's  warfare. 

"And  then  what  was  his  reward  at  the  hands  of  the  ad- 
ministration ?  He  was  put  on  trial  before  Buchanan  and 
Marcy  and  sent  to  a  court  martial.  If  ever  my  blood  boiled, 
it  was  eight  years  ago,  when  I  met  the  old  chieftain  at  Wash- 
ington on  his  way  to  that  court  martial.  I  asked  him  where 
he  was  going.  He  said :  'To  the  town  of  Fredericksburg, 
Md.'  'For  what?'  I  asked.  'To  attend  a  court  martial,' 
said  he.  'What  is  the  charge  against  you  ?'  I  inquired.  'God 
only  knows — you  must  ask  the  administration,  not  me.  I 
never  have  been  disgraced  in  the  field,  but  their  design  is 
to  disgrace  me  before  the  country.'  Fellow  citizens,  can 
any  of  you  tell  what  Gen.  Scott  was  arraigned  for?  I 
think  not. 

"But  to  return  to  North  Carolina.  I  shall  return  home, 
and  if  I  can  only  hear  the  assurance  that  the  glorious  State 
of  New  York  will  do  its  duty,  I  am  sure  I  have  only  to  tell 
my  fellow  citizens  in  North  Carolina  so,  and  victory  will 
perch  on  our  banner,  and  unless  you  are  very  speedy  of  foot 
and  strong  of  arm,  we  will  outstrip  you.    [Applause.] 

"I  heard  a  remark,  while  on  my  way  here,  from  a  Demo- 
crat, that  the  Whig  party  was  only  as  a  brake  upon  the  great 
Democratic  train  that  was  sweeping  over  the  land.  That 
was  intended  as  a  cut,  but  it  was  like  an  unfaithful  blunder- 
buss— it  hit  the  man  behind  harder  than  the  object  in  front. 
[Laughter.]  The  Democratic  train  is  rushing  on  to  destruc- 
tion with  an  open  draw-bridge  ahead,  and,  with  inevitable 
ruin  in  prospect,  is  shouting  out  to  the  Whigs,  'Break  up,  or 
we  are  gone,'  [Laughter.]  Sir,  thank  God,  we  are  on 
board,  and  we  will  let  them  go  on  and  plunge  heels  over 
head  into  the  abyss.     [Applause.]     Certain  it  is,  that  either 


A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  335 

they  or  the  country  have  got  to  be  destroyed,  and  we  are 
for  saving  the  latter.     [Applause.]'" 

Here  was  the  same  old  ring  of  The  Laird  of  Miiirhead 

"Afore  the  King  in  order  stude 
The  stout  laird  of  Muirhead, 
Wi  that  same  twa-hand  miickle  sword 
That  Bartram  fell'd  stark  dead. 

"He  sware  he  wadna  lose  his  right 
To  fight  in  ilka  field ; 
Nor  budge  him  from  hs  liege's  sight, 
Till  his  last  gasp  should  yield."' 

This  speech  was  read  all  over  the  United  States  and 
touched  the  hearts  of  every  lover  of  the  Constitution  and 
the  Union.  It  made  such  an  impression  that  one  boy  at 
least,  in  a  northern  home,  heard  its  author  discussed  over  a 
dozen  years  afterwards,  when  "tlie  train  had  rushed  on  to 
destruction  into  the  open  draw-bridge  ahead ;"  and  ''a 
mighty  voice"  did,  "like  the  sound  of  a  trumpet"  "speak 
forth,  proclaiming  liberty  and  union  as  the  watch-word," 
and  did  "save  the  Union !" 

One  other  address  must  be  noticed,  namely,  one  he  de- 
livered about  a  month  later,  October  24th,  in  his  native 
county,  Pittsylvania,  Virginia,  just  across  from  Rockingham 
county.  North  Carolina,  the  home  of  his  childhood  and 
youth.  This  address  was  on  the  occasion  of  a  visit  to  a 
mass-meeting  at  the  court  house : 

"Governor  Morehead,  of  North  Carolina,  having  been 
introduced  by  the  President,  arose  and  said  (after  loud  and 
long  continued  applause  with  which  he  was  welcomed 
had  subsided)  that  the  times,  being  sadly  out  of  joint,  he 
came  over  to  the  Old  Dominion,  to  find  out,  if  he  could, 
the  causes  which  had  brought  the  country  to  its  present 
deplorable  condition,  which  he  portrayed  in  a  masterly  man- 
ner. He  then  reviewed,  briefly  but  graphically,  the  whole 
field  of  politics,  from  1824  to  the  present  time  [October, 
1856] — said  he  was  one  of  the  few,  if  not  the  only  man,  who 

1  The  Weekly  Raleigh  Register,  1st  Oct.,  1856. 
^  See  Scott's  ballad,  ante. 


336  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

had  voted  three  times  as  an  elector  for  Gen.  Jackson — 
showed  the  inconsistency  of  those  Jackson  men  who  now 
cooperate  with  the  Democracy — how  Virginia  had,  on 
former  occasions,  disappointed  the  country  by  repudiating 
her  own  worthiest  sons,  when  put  in  nomination  for  the 
Presidency,  and  by  voting  for  northern  men  with  southern 
principles,  who  had  betrayed  the  best  interests  of  the  nation 
— said  a  northern  man,  not  with  Southern  but  with  na- 
tional principles,  was  now  a  candidate  for  her  support,  and 
it  remained  to  be  seen  whether  the  old  Mother  of  States 
would  be  again  overreached  and  deceived  by  the  wily  arts 
of  Democracy.  He  animadverted  with  much  severity  on 
Polk's  Administration,  alluding  to  the  treatment  which  those 
great  chieftains,  Taylor  and  Scott,  received  at  his  hands. 
He  had  recently  learned,  he  said,  for  the  first  time,  during 
a  tour  through  some  of  the  northern  states,  the  name  of 
the  present  Chief  Magistrate,  who  is  known  at  the  South  as 
The  Fainting  Gen.  Pierce!  His  name  is  pronounced  Purse, 
by  his  northern  friends  and  neighbors,  and  a  most  appropri- 
ate name  it  is  for  the  head  of  such  an  administration.  Per- 
haps some  General  Purse,  if  not  one  at  the  head  of  the  gov- 
ernment, could  give  an  account  of  the  thirty  millions  of  dol- 
lars which  have  so  mysteriously  disappeared  from  the  vaults 
of  the  Treasury. 

"He  said  the  Whigs  had  remained  passive  for  several 
years — had  nothing  to  do  with  the  elevation  of  the  powers 
that  be.  H  they  were  dead,  as  had  been  stated,  their  ghosts 
would  frighten  every  Democrat  in  the  country ;  before  the 
Ides  of  November  Whigs  would  be  glad  of  the  aid  of  the 
American  Party;  but  having  nominated  Mr.  Fillmore,  they 
intend  to  elect  him,  with  or  without  its  assistance. 

"The  Ex-Governor  painted  a  truthful  but  glowing  pic- 
ture of  disunion,  a  contingency  flippantly  spoken  of  by 
demagogues — a  consummation  to  which  he  would  never 
submit;  would  never  consent  to  a  state  of  things  which 
would  render  it  necessary  for  him  to  get  a  passport  to  cross 
the  line  that  separates  the  Old  North  State  from  the  Old 
Dominion  ;  to  go  to  a  foreign  land  when  he  wishes  to  worship 
at  the  shrine  of  the  Father  of  his  Country;  but  that  when- 


A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  337 

ever  his  inclination  prompted,  he  would  make  his  home  on 
the  banks  of  the  Hudson  or  amid  magnolia  groves  of  the  far 
South ;  it  was  all  his  country ;  his  father  had  fought  for  it ; 
he  would  never  give  it  up.  The  Democracy,  after  getting 
the  country  into  its  present  disturbed  and  unhappy  condi- 
tion, prescribe  the  same  remedy  that  a  farmer  would  for  a 
horse  with  a  broken  leg,  namely,  to  Knock  it  in  the  head. 
If  the  Union  were  dissolved,  it  would  not  be  into  two  con- 
federacies, but  into  thirty-one  states.  The  same  causes 
which  make  nation  quarrel  with  nation,  section  with  section, 
man  with  man,  men  with  their  wives,  would  operate  to  keep 
the  whole  country  in  continual  war :  there  would  be  no  place 
where  peace  and  contentment  could  be  found.  To  remove 
from  one  state  to  another  would  be  to  jump  out  of  the 
frying  pan  into  the  fire. 

"Comparing  the  three  parties  of  the  country  to  three  ships, 
he  brought  up,  first,  the  old  hulk  of  Democracy,  loaded 
down  to  the  water's  edge  with  public  plunder,  buccaneers 
over-burdened  with  spoils,  her  prow  set  for  Cuba,  with 
colors  flying,  inscribed  on  one  side — 'Buchanan!  Democ- 
racy !  Cuba !  No  Improvement  by  the  General  Govern- 
ment.' On  the  other — 'Might  makes  Right !  Pacific  Rail- 
road!' The  old  rickety  craft  gives  a  lurch  in  the  first  gale 
and  goes  down  with  a  bubble  to  be  heard  of  no  more.  Then 
comes  the  piratical  Black  Republicans,  with  their  black  flag 
and  motley  crew.  Next  comes  the  old  Ship  of  State,  with 
Fillmore  for  her  commander,  with  the  stars  and  stripes  flut- 
tering to  the  breeze ;  'The  Union !  The  Constitution !'  glit- 
tering in  letters  of  gold  on  her  trembling  pennant,  the  eagle 
perched  upon  the  top  of  the  main-mast,  overlooking  the  gal- 
lant crew — storms  might  comes  from  the  North,  from  the 
South,  waves  might  roll  and  breakers  roar, 

"The  strained  mast  might  quiver  as  a  reed 
The  rent  canvas,  fluttering,  strew  the  gale, 
But  still  would  she  on  !"^ 

Nevertheless  the  effect  of  the  new  Republican-Abolitionist 
party  in   1856  was  to  draw  heavily  from  the  Democratic 

1  Greensboro  Patriot,  Oct.  24,  1856. 


338  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

ranks  in  the  North — one  northern  boy's  two  grandfathers 
and   father  changed   from  Democrats  to  RepubUcans  that 

year and  this  so  consoHdated  the  South  that,  in  North 

CaroHna  alone,  the  pendulum  in  the  gubernatorial  election 
swung  to  the  unprecedented  Democratic  majority  of  over 
12,000;  while  in  the  national  election  Buchanan  was  vic- 
torious, and  the  Whigs  were  dead. 

Meanwhile,  by  1857,  North  Carolina  was  taking  on  a 
new  prosperity  under  the  stimulus  of  her  new  railroad. 
National  Treasury  statistics  showed  her,  with  a  population 
of  921,852,  having  a  property  valuation  of  $239,603,372. 
This  gave  her  greater  wealth  than  California,  Connecticut, 
Iowa,  Maine,  Michigan,  Missouri,  New  Hampshire,  New 
Jersey  and  some  few  others.  And  not  the  least  of  these 
sources  of  stimulation  were  the  prospects  of  a  new  great 
port  terminal  of  the  trans-state  lines,  as  illustrated  in  the 
following  letter: 

Governor  Morehead's  enthusiastic  development  of  his 
plans  for  Morehead  City  is  well  illustrated  in  a  letter  of  his 
of  February  9,  1857,  from  "New-Berne,"  as  his  letter  spells 
it :  It  is  written  to  the  editors  of  The  Patriot  and  Flag,  and 
says : 

"On  Monday  last  the  barque  Damon,  Captain  Bartlett,  of 
Bangor,  Maine,  entered  the  port  of  Beaufort  with  a  cargo 
of  rails  for  the  Atlantic  Railroad  of  476  tons.  She  passed 
the  bar  and  entered  the  port  at  dead  low  water. 

"On  Friday,  the  'T  &  J'  barque,  Captain  J.  D.  Coffin,  of 
Halifax,  Nova  Scotia,  entered  the  same  port  in  low  tide 
with  580  tons  rails  and  drawing  over  15  feet  of  water.  They 
are  lying  in  New  Port  Channel,  near  each  other,  in  front 
of  the  terminus  of  the  railroad  where  the  Wharf  is  to  be 
built,  and  about  3000  feet  from  the  shore,  and  in  water 
some  20  or  30  feet  deep.  They  might  have  brought  in  much 
larger  cargoes  if  the  vessels  had  been  larger. 

"I  wish  all  North  Carolina  could  have  seen  both  these 
magnificent  barques  entering  the  port  under  a  cloud  of 
canvass,  all  sails  set  (as  I  saw  the  T  &  J)  and  see  them 
round  to  and  cast  anchor  within  a  few  feet  of  the  shore, 
where  they  now  ride  so  quietly  on  the  bosom  of  this  safe 


A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  339 

land-locked  harbor,  that  every  outline  is  mirrored  from  its 
placid  surface. 

"These  are  splendid  ships,  well  arranged  and  well  com- 
manded by  their  quiet  and  gentlemanly  Captains,  whose 
bearing  would  grace  the  drawing-room,  and  is  the  reverse 
of  that  rough  address  and  exterior  which  is  so  often  attached 
to  an  Old  Salt. 

"The  cabins  are  handsomely  fitted  up,  and  Mrs.  Bartlett 
and  an  interesting  daughter  grace  Captain  Bartlett's,  and 
have  partaken  with  him  in  the  rough  weather  which  both 
experienced  on  their  voyage  from  New  Port,  Wales,  from 
which  place  they  sailed  about  the  15th  of  December  last. 

"Twelve  months  more  will  show  the  wisdom  of  driving 
the  Atlantic  Road  forward  to  completion,  and  the  world 
will  find  out  that  North  Carolina  has  one  of  the  best  and 
safest  ports  on  the  Atlantic  Coast. 

"Yours  respectfully 

"J.  M.  Morehead."^ 

By  August  21,  1857,  Governor  Morehead,  as  President 
of  The  Sheppard's  Point  Land  Company,  was  able  to  an- 
nounce that  on  November  11th,  following,  the  first  lots  in 
the  new  city  would  be  sold  at  public  auction,  and  the 
Atlantic  and  North  Carolina  Railroad  would  be  ready  for 
business  on  New  Year's  Day  following.  Here  is  the  vision 
President  Morehead  had  of  this  new  city's  future  place  in 
the  world :  "The  interior  communications  by  water  and  land 
must  make  this  a  great  commercial  city.  The  vast  produc- 
tions of  the  fertile  valleys  of  the  Roanoke,  Tar  and  Neuse 
Rivers  and  the  commerce  of  those  great  inland  seas — the 
Albemarle,  Carrituck,  Croatan  and  Pamlico  Sounds  on  the 
north,  whilst  Bogue  Sound  will  bear  on  its  bosom,  the  agri- 
cultural products,  lumber,  naval  stores  and  fine  ship  timber 
of  the  regions  lying  South.  The  North  Carolina  Railroad, 
among  the  best  in  the  Union,  223  miles  long,  is  completed 
to  Charlotte,  where  it  connects  through  the  South  Carolina 
and  Georgia  Railroads  with  Atlanta  and  the  southwest ;  and 
by  its  western  extension,  now  in  rapid  progress,  it  is  contem- 

1  The  Weekly  Raleigh  Register,  18th  Feb.,  1857. 


340  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

plated  to  reach  the  trade  of  Memphis  and  the  Mississippi 
Valley  by  the  net-work  of  all  the  railways  that  connect  at 
Atlanta,  Chattanooga,  or  with  the  Eastern  Tennessee  Rail- 
road. The  ports  of  Beaufort,  Chattanooga,  Memphis  and 
San  Diego  in  the  Pacific  are  about  the  same  parallel  of  lati- 
tude; and  if  that  parallel  be  extended  across  the  f'acific,  it 
will  reach  Shanghai,  the  nearest  great  port  on  the  Eastern 
continent;  therefore,  if  the  Pacific  Railroad  be  constructed 
(and  that  should  be  done  forthwith),  why  may  not  this  new 
city  become  the  Atlantic  mart  fo**  the  commerce  of  the  East 
Indies?  Two  short  railroads  w>'1  connect  the  two  great 
coal  fields  of  the  state,  lying  on  ';e  south  of  the  North 
Carolina  Railroad,  with  that  road ;  and  it  is  confidently  ex- 
pected that  a  vast  coal  trade  will  be  carried  on  through  the 
new  city;  if  so,  may  not  Beaufort  become  a  great  coaling 
port,  not  only  for  purposes  of  commerce,  but  to  furnish 
the  supplies  to  steamers  passing  so  near  the  entrance  going 
north  and  south ;  and  may  not  the  new  city  become  the 
'entre  depot'  between  the  North  and  the  South,  to  which 
our  able  and  distinguished  countryman,  Lieut.  Maury,  refers 
in  his  unrivalled  statesmanlike  paper  on  the  commerce  of  the 
Amazon,  South  AiTcerica,  and  the  Gulf  of  Alexico?  The 
City  of  Morehead  is  situated  on  a  beautiful  neck  of  land  or 
dry  plain,  almost  entirely  surrounded  with  salt  water ;  i^s 
climate  salubrious ;  its  sea  breezes  and  sea  bathing  delight- 
ful ;  its  drinking  water  good ;  and  its  fine  chalybeate  spring, 
strongly  impregnated  with  sulphur,  will  make  it  a  pleasant 
watering  place.  ...  It  will  be  the  first  instance  of  an 
entire  new  city  on  the  Atlantic  Coast  being  brought  into 
market  at  once ;  and  capitalists  may  never  have  again  such  an 
opportunity  for  good  investments,  for  a  great  city  must  and 

will  be  built  at  this  place. J.  M.  Morehead,  President  of 

Sheppard's  Point  Land  Company."^ 

The  November  sales  were  successful,  in  that  over  60  lots 
were  sold  in  Morehead  City  for  some  $13,000,  while  at  the 
plat  called  "Carolina  City"  lots  were  sold  for  a  total  of 
$17,000.     A  regular  boat  was  running  between  Morehead 

^  Greensboro  Patriot,  6th  Nov.,  1857. 


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A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  341 

City  and  Beaufort  on  an  hour  schedule.  An  editorial  letter 
to  the  Greensboro  Patriot  of  17th  September,  1858,  says : 
"Ever  since  our  school-boy  days  we  had  heard  of  Beaufort 
harbor,  having  learned  from  our  geography  that  there  was 
such  a  place  away  down  on  the  sea-coast,  many  hundred 
miles  distant,  where  the  people  lived  on  fish,  and  used 
oyster-shells  as  cups,  with  which  to  drink  water  out  of  old 
pine  stumps ;  but  we  had  never  had  an  opportunity  to  visit 
that  section  of  the  country,  and  see  for  ourselves,  whether 
or  not  the  men  of  that  region — as  had  been  reported  and 
believed  in  the  interior  by  many — were  scaly,  had  broad 
tails  and  thorny  fins  growing  from  their  backs,  the  result  of 
living  on  fish  and  diving  after  crabs.  Well,  we  went,  we 
saw,  and  we  have  returned.  We  saw  not  only  the  mighty 
ocean,  the  deepest  inlet  and  finest  harbor  on  the  Atlantic 
coast,  south  of  Norfolk;  but  we  found  the  waters  covered 
over  with  vessels  of  various  sizes  and  descriptions,  freighted 
with  produce  of  every  section  of  the  state,  transporting  it 
from  our  shores  to  distant  parts  of  the  world,  and  bringing 
in  return  whatever  was  most  pleasant  and  desirable.  We 
found  there,  also,  an  active,  good  looking,  thriving  and  in- 
telligent population,  men  of  character  and  stability,  who 
were  putting  forth  all  their  energies  to  avail  themselves  of 
the  many  advantages  and  the  great  market  facilities  with 
which  nature  has  so  bountifully  blessed  them.  Beaufort  is 
situated  immediately  on  the  Sound,  right  opposite  the  inlet, 
and  has  a  population  of  some  twelve  or  fifteen  hundred, 
contains  three  very  neat  churches,  three  hotels,  all  said  to 
be  good  houses.     .     .     ." 

He  then  describes  the  inlet  approach :  "The  inlet  at 
Beaufort  Harbor  is,  we  understand,  about  three-quarters 
of  a  mile  wide,  extending  from  the  Point  on  the  Shackel- 
ford banks  on  the  east  to  the  point  at  Fort  Macon  on  the 
West.  Ships  drawing  from  eighteen  to  twenty  feet  can 
cross  the  bar  with  safety.  Ships  crossing  the  bar,  enter  the 
harbor  near  the  Shackelford  banks,  then  bear  up  in  a 
westwardly  direction  toward  Fort  Macon.  From  the  bar 
at  the  inlet,  across  the  Sound  to  Beaufort,  is  about  three 
miles,  this  being  about  the  widest  part  of  the  harbor.     The 


342  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

channel  is  in  the  form  of  a  half-moon,  one  horn  running 
eastwardly  along  the  Shackelford  banks,  called  Core  Sound, 
and  the  other  westwardly  by  Morehead  and  Carolina  cities, 
which  are  situated  on  Bogue  Sound.  The  deepest  water 
is  along  Newport  river,  which  runs  in  nearly  a  north 
direction,  between  Morehead  City  and  Beaufort,  touching 
the  railroad  wharf  in  the  former  place.  The  main  channel 
is  about  one  mile  wide,  so  that  the  inside  of  the  channel 
would  be  some  two  miles  from  Beaufort,  though  vessels 
drawing  from  nine  to  ten  feet  water  can  approach  the  Beau- 
fort wharves  at  full  tide.  Running  up  the  channel  about 
three  miles  from  the  bar,  we  come  to  the  railroad  wharf  at 
Morehead  City,  where  vessels  drawing  eighteen  feet  can  ap- 
proach with  ease,  and  unload  and  take  in  lading  with  the 
greatest  safety." 

He  then  shows  that  one  turns  from  the  channel  to  the 
left  into  Bogue  Sound,  three  miles  farther,  to  Carolina 
City,  where  vessels  drawing  only  twelve  feet  could  land ; 
but  this  narrative  is  concerned  only  with  his  description  of 
Morehead  City,  the  real  port.  "Sheppard's  Point,  or  More- 
head  City,  is  situated  very  much  like  the  City  of  New  York. 
On  the  south  is  Bogue  Sound,  on  the  east  right  at  the  point 
is  Newport  River,  through  which  runs  the  main  channel, 
and  out  to  which  the  railroad  wharf  extends.  On  the  north 
is  Calico  Creek,  extending  westwardly  .  .  .  nearly 
three  miles,  and  running  almost  parallel  with  Bogue  Sound. 
This  channel,  from'  the  railroad  wharf  for  nearly  a  mile 
along  the  Point,  is  now,  at  full  tide,  from  six  to  nine  feet 
deep,  and  if  properly  dredged,  could,  for  that  distance  up, 
admit  vessels  drawing  from  ten  to  twelve  feet  of  water, 
while  the  dirt  taken  from  the  channel  would  be  amply 
sufficient  to  raise  the  ground  between  the  channel  and  the 
mainland,  above  high  tide,  affording  a  long  extent  of 
wharves.  The  railroad  wharf,  taken  in  connection  with  the 
warehouse  at  Morehead  City,  when  completed,  will  be  a 
magnificent  affair.  The  wharf  having  to  extend  for  a  con- 
siderable distance  from  the  Point  to  reach  the  channel,  it 
was  for  a  long  time  predicted  that  it  would  be  impossible 
for  one  to  be  constructed  sufficiently  firm  and  durable  to 


A  RAILWAY  AND  A  PORT  343 

resist  the  action  of  the  tides  and  the  violence  of  storms. 
All  doubt  on  this  score,  however,  has  been  removed,  and 
it  is  universally  conceded  that  the  work  not  only  can,  but 
that  in  a  few  months  it  will  be  completed." 

He  tells  how  the  Chief  Engineer  and  Governor  Morehead 
explained  everything  to  him  and  how  they  proposed  having 
wharves  on  both  sides  of  the  peninsula — Sheppard's  Point. 
"Let  only  one-third  the  amount  be  expended  at  Morehead 
City  as  has  been  on  the  bay  at  Baltimore,  and  every  obstruc- 
tion will  be  removed  and  vessels  of  the  largest  size  can 
load  and  unload  at  the  wharves  with  the  greatest  ease,  while 
they  are  most  securely  protected  from  storms.  The  rail- 
road warehouse,  when  completed,  will  be  a  magnificent  work. 
It  stands  just  at  the  end  of  the  wharf,  surrounded  by  water 
twenty  feet  deep,  supported  by  ninety-three  large  iron  piles 
which  have  been  driven  into  the  ground  by  an  immense 
force.  .  .  .  The  extent  of  the  warehouse  is  165  by  90 
feet,  with  the  railroad  track  passing  through  its  entire 
length  on  both  sides — the  track  branching  on  the  wharf — 
so  that  freight  can  be  taken  immediately  from  the  cars  and 
placed  aboard  the  vessels." 

Then  a  pleasing  incident  occurred :  Governor  Morehead 
had  told  him  all  of  the  tropical  nature  of  this  coast  so  near 
the  Gulf  Stream,  and  spoke  of  fig  trees  large  as  apple  trees, 
and  proposed  they  sail  up  Calico  Creek  [naturally]  to  a 
Mrs.  Piggott's  and  enjoy  some  figs  and  melons.  The  editor 
and  the  Chief  Engineer  were  disinclined,  until  Governor 
Morehead  added  that  she  had  some  pretty  daughters,  where- 
upon they  accepted  with  alacrity — although  the  editor  lays 
all  blame  on  the  engineer.  They  feasted  on  three  varieties 
of  figs,  the  White,  the  Red  and  the  Blue  Fig,  mentioning 
them  in  this  order,  as  though  conscious  of  their  patriotic 
colors,  and  avowing  the  Blue  to  be  the  "best  flavored." 
Five  or  six  bushels  to  a  tree  was  a  not  unusual  crop.  Then 
came  the  two  daughters — "Hebes,"  the  editor  calls  them, 
while  the  engineer  and  he  both  seem  to  have  forgotten  both 
figs  and  melons  in  their  presence,  and  Governor  Morehead 
again  illustrated  his  power  as  a  diplomat.  The  staid  editor 
advises  Guilford  young  men,  that  if  they  want  to  help  found 


344  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

a  great  port  they  would  find  no  such  difficulty  as  Romulus 
did — "a  scarcity  of  ladies,"  for — 

"I've  been  to  the  West,  I've  been  to  the  East, 

And  I've  been  to  North  Carolino ; 
But  the  prettiest  girl  I  ever  saw 

Was  tripping  along  through  the  Pino."^ 

And  yet  this  was  a  year  of  one  of  the  greatest  panics  and 
failures  in  national  history.  Fifteen  great  railways  of  the 
land  with  a  total  of  over  $180,000,000  liabilities  failed  to 
meet  their  debts;  but  those  of  North  Carolina,  under  the 
inspiration  and  wisdom  of  Governor  Morehead's  years  of 
leadership,  were  not  among  them ;  although  stock  was  de- 
preciated and  President  Fisher  was  charged  with  incompe- 
tency. Newbern  celebrated  the  opening  of  the  Atlantic 
road  on  April  29th,  with  free  excursion  trains  from  all  over 
the  state  bringing  over  10,000  people,  and  with  ceremonies 
lasting  three  days.  Thus,  by  May,  1858,  Governor  More- 
head's  new  road  was  in  operation  and  all  the  lots  sold  in 
Morehead  City. 

^  Chorus  of  an  old  ballad. 


XVI 

He  Enters  The  Assembly 

TO 

Defend  and  Extend  the  Railway 

West  and  North 

A  Great  Vision  of  Transportation 

1858 

With  the  Morehead  City  and  railroad  projects  accom- 
plished facts  in  the  spring  of  1858,  there  was  a  demand  that 
Governor  Morehead  enter  the  Assembly  to  defend  and 
extend  railroad  development/  He  had  spent  a  good  deal  of 
time  in  Greensboro,  and  in  September  previously  he  had 
organized  the  Greene  Monument  Association  proposing  that 
either  the  national  or  state  governments,  if  the  former  would 
not,  erect  a  monument  to  General  Greene  at  Guilford 
Battle-Ground,  and  he  was  made  President  of  this  body. 

A  pretty  picture  of  him  at  "Blandwood,"  that  adjoined 
Edgeworth  Seminary,  which  he  was  enlarging  at  this  time,  is 
given  by  an  old  pupil — a  picture  of  Governor  Morehead 
accidentally  mxceting  two  young  pupils  of  this  girls'  semi- 
nary, who  had  wandered  into  the  unusually  beautiful 
grounds  of  "Blandwood,"  in  Reminiscences  of  School  Life, 
by  An  Edgeworth  Pupil :  "At  first  a  little  startled  at  the 
sight  of  two  crouching  children,  Governor  Morehead  halted, 
but  something  in  our  wistful  eyes  and  home-hungry  faces 
told  the  tale.  Extending  both  hands  he  drew  us  to  him ; 
kindly  he  patted  our  heads,  then  sitting  down  with  us,  he 
talked  pleasantly  to  us  of  our  homes,  and  cheerfully  gave 

^  At  a  meeting  of  stock-holders  of  the  Atlantic  and  North  Carolina  Railroad 
at  Newbern  on  the  24th  of  June,  1858,  Governor  Morehead  was  present  and 
plainly  indicated  that  the  road's  capital  stock  must  be  increased  from  $1,600,000 
to  the  necessary  amount,  while  Governor  Bragg  asserted  that  the  road's  man- 
agement was  sound  and  the  construction  properly  done. 

345 


346  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

us  free  access  not  only  to  these  intermediate  grounds,  which 
for  the  first  time  we  had  on  that  occasion  dared  enjoy,  but 
he  also  invited  us  to  'Blandwood,'  his  own  beautiful  home. 
He  then  passed  on,  and  we  returned  to  the  Seminary  a  happy 
couple.  .  .  .  His  name  on  history's  page  has  its  reward ; 
over  these  Southern  lands  'tis  a  household  word.  And  re- 
membering his  wisdom  and  justice  in  our  country's  weal, 
what  fitter  talisman  need  we  ask.  But  his  private  life,  who 
shall  tell  us  of  that?  Who?  Let  the  countless  throngs 
so  often  gathered  at  Blandwood's  pleasant  halls  tell  us. 
Let  the  gay  and  fashionable  pleasure  seeker  tell  us.  Let 
noble  lords  and  handsome  ladies  tell  us.  And  the  statesman, 
let  him  speak  of  his  compeer,  this  scion  of  the  'Old 
Dominion'  gentility.  But  are  these  all?  No,  no.  Let  the 
prattling  child,  the  weary  invalid,  the  aged  matron,  the 
gray-haired  sire,  the  orphan  and  widow,  the  poor  and 
homeless.  Yea,  these  and  hundreds  of  school  girls,  all  may 
tell  us  of  one  whose  sympathies  and  charities  flowed  in  every 
channel  of  want."^ 

As  antiphonal  to  this,  from  the  eastern  end  of  the  state 
is  another  reminiscence,  this  time  from  a  boy  instead  of  a 
girl ! 

Governor  Morehead  was  once  visiting  the  father  of  a 
seventeen-year-old  boy,  in  1858,  near  La  Grange,  N,  C., 
and  considerably  over  a  half  century  later  that  boy  wrote 

his  impressions.     "I  heard  him  [Gov.  M ]  say,  as  they 

were  sipping  their  toddies  in  the  parlor,  that  a  man  ought 
to  be  a  half-hour  taking  a  drink.  He  said  to  take  it  all 
at  one  swallow  was  too  great  a  shock  to  the  system ;  but 
sipped  slowly,  it  diffused  itself  in  the  system  gradually  and 
was  more  beneficial.  I  adopted  his  plan  and  followed  it  all 
through  my  life.  If  Morehead  had  put  on  clerical  robes, 
no  Pope  or  priest  ever  had  a  more  benevolent  face  or  a  more 
magnetic  presence."-  This  father  was  a  director  of  the 
Atlantic  and  North  Carolina  Railroad. 

As  has  been  said,  his  Guilford  county  friends  and  others 

^  Clippings  in  possession  of  Mrs.  W.  R.  Walker,  Spray,  N.  C. 

2  C.  S.  Wooten,  Mt.  Olive,  N.  C,  in  a  letter  to  Judge  W.  P.  Bynum,  2nd 
Sept,  1921,  in  response  to  an  invitation  to  attend  the  presentation  of  a  por- 
trait of  Governor  Morehead  to  the  Court  at  Greensboro,  N.  C. 


RAILWAYS  WEST  AND  NORTH  347 

interested  in  further  railroad  development  persuaded  him 
that  it  was  his  duty  to  take  up  the  cause  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  The  specific  aims  will  appear  as  the  campaign 
and  sessions  proceed;  for  he  was  successful  at  the  August 
election,  receiving  1581  votes,  the  highest  of  any  except 
for  McRae  for  Governor  and  Gorrell  for  the  Senate.  Then 
it  began  to  appear  what  was  the  real  discontent  of  the  people, 
even  while,  in  September,  the  Western  North  Carolina  Rail- 
road was  completed  as  far  as  Statesville.  This  note  was 
sounded  in  the  Greensboro  Patriot  about  the  time  for  the 
meeting  of  the  Assembly :  it  was  charged  that  the  Democrats 
put  in  controlling  Directors  from  the  Wilmington  and  Wel- 
don  Railroad,  and  subordinated  the  North  Carolina  Railroad 
to  the  Wilmington  interests — and  that  was  what  was  the 
matter  of  it!  So  it  was  the  same  old  fight  of  east  and 
west ;  and  the  west  again  brought  out  their  old  club  to  battle 
with,  namely,  the  Danville  link !  And  Governor  Morehead 
was  chosen  to  again  weild  this  Excalibur !  This  promised  a 
tense  condition  in  the  legislative  halls  at  Raleigh  and  was 
bound  to  make  such  a  battle  as  those  halls  had  not  seen  since 
Calvin  Graves  voted  "Aye"  and  created  the  Central  railroad ! 
All  the  more  was  it  a  gigantic  battle  because  the  odds  were 
so  great:  the  House  had  a  Democratic  majority  of  thirty- 
eight  and  the  Senate  a  majority  of  twelve!  And  the  Guil- 
ford David  was  a  Whig  against  this  Democratic  Goliath ! 
And  Governor  Ellis'  majority  was   16,247. 

And  still  there  was  a  reason  for  this  Democratic  land- 
slide, locally,  for  the  state  was  becoming  alarmed  at  a  bonded 
indebtedness  of  $6,879,505,  of  which  was  $533,500  balance 
on  the  Atlantic  and  North  Carolina  Railroad,  a  $400,000 
loan  to  that  line,  and  a  loan  of  like  amount  to  the  Western 
North  Carolina  Railroad — or  a  total  of  $1,333,500  for  rail- 
road extensions  east  and  west,  alone.  In  addition  to  this 
a  total  of  •  640,000  in  bonds  must  soon  be  issued  to  the 
Western — or  last  mentioned  road — to  increase  it  to 
$1,973,500,  or  nearly  one-third  of  the  entire  state  debt. 
The  state's  stock  was  of  course  a  sinking  fund  in  all  this, 
but  the  people  were  concerned  about  it. 

The  program  of  the  Guilford  leaders  was,  first,  to  reorgan- 


348  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

ize  the  North  Carolina  Railroad  Directory  plans  so  as  to  give 
the  stock-holders  control,  which  meant,  practically,  western 
control;  and,  secondly,  if  this  failed,  to  get  a  charter  for  the 
Danville  link.  They  held  that  the  mismanagement  of  the 
Central  road  was  not  so  much  due  to  President  Fisher  as  the 
Democratic  eastern  directory's  policy  of  subordinating  the 
road  to  Wilmington  interests.  This  of  course  also  meant 
that  it  was  against  Morehead  City  and  Beaufort  interests, 
as  well  as  the  Atlantic  railroad !  As  a  part  of  the  battle  it 
was  proposed  to  have  stock-holders  of  both  the  Atlantic 
road  and  the  Western  road  have  a  majority  on  the  North 
Carolina  Central  directory  instead  of  the  Wilmington  road ! 
To  prepare  the  way  for  these,  the  Danville  connection  club 
was  put  upon  the  table  at  an  early  date. 

The  Assembly  gathered  at  Raleigh  capitol  on  November 
15,  1858,  and  the  Ex-Governor  from  Greensboro  took  his 
seat  as  a  representative  in  the  Commons.  He  was  at  once 
put  on  the  Internal  Improvement  Committee  and  on  the 
Joint  Standing  Committee  on  Finance.  The  press  of  the 
east  began  to  teem  with  arguments  against  the  "link,"  or 
"Danville  Connection,"  as  it  was  more  commonly  called. 
They  said  that  even  when  the  Richmond  and  Danville 
Railroad  was  first  proposed,  it  was,  like  the  Petersburg  and 
Norfolk  roads,  designed  to  tap  the  Roanoke  valley  and  west- 
ern North  Carolina  which  was  growing  so  rapidly.  That 
Richmond,  as  the  largest  tobacco  market  in  the  Union — with 
possession  of  the  regular  order  of  the  French  govern- 
ment, and  with  the  largest  flouring  mills  in  the  world  com- 
manding the  South  American  market,  would  make  compe- 
tition from  any  port  in  North  Carolina  of  no  avail :  all 
western  commerce  of  the  state  would  become  a  Richmond 
tributary ;  and  it  would  debilitate  every  railroad  in  the  state. 
They  showed  the  well-grounded  great  fear  of  an  oncom- 
ing Piedmont  trans-national  line  from  Maine  to  New 
Orleans;  and  looked  upon  the  advocates  of  the  Greensboro 
and  Danville  Railroad  as  the  greatest  menace  the  state  had 
had  in  m.odern  times !  They  were  looked  upon  as  wreckers 
by  the  eastern  press ;  even  the  Whig  leader,  The  Raleigh 
Register,  joined  the  cry.     They  recalled  to  Governor  More- 


RAILWAYS  WEST  AND  NORTH  349 

head  his  speech  at  Petersburg,  Virginia,  on  Nov.  8,  1849, 
when  they  claimed  he  said  that,  if  the  Central  road  was  built, 
with  a  re-constructed  Raleigh  &  Gaston  road,  neither  he  nor 
his  people  would  ever  ask  for  a  Danville  road ;  and  charged 
him,  as  Virginia  born,  with  being  ready  to  sacrifice  his 
adopted  state,  and  break  up  her  whole  system  of  improve- 
ments. This  was  the  kind  of  press  attacks  upon  him  by 
mid-December,  1858,  and  upon  his  following  in  Person, 
Rockingham,  Caswell  and  Guilford  counties,  among  whom 
were  Democrats  like  Speaker  Settle,  his  old  Latin  teacher, 
who  was  considered  another  Calvin  Graves !  Evidently  the 
move  to  put  eastern  and  western  extension  Directors,  in- 
stead of  Wilmington  ones,  on  the  Central  Railroad  board, 
with  its  accompanying  club,  the  Danville  link,  was  breaking 
up  political  families.  Certainly  it  was  striking  terror  into 
the  eastern  political  leaders,  like  a  life  and  death  struggle. 

The  Morehead  minority  report  of  1858  shows  that  even 
without  the  Danville  connection  that  trade  is  coming  from 
Virginia,  not  to  it ;  and  even  with  the  Danville  connection 
produce  would  change  cars  twice  to  reach  Richmond,  192 
miles,  while  it  can  reach  Newbern  port,  187  miles,  More- 
head  City,  222  miles,  or  Wilmington,  211  miles,  with  no 
change — reaching  the  Atlantic  in  far  less  time  than  to  reach 
Richmond,  which  is  an  interior  port  160  to  170  miles  from 
the  Atlantic,  but  slightly  superior  as  a  port  to  Newbern,  not 
equal  to  Wilmington,  and  greatly  inferior  to  Morehead  City. 
This  report  shows  that  the  Greensboro-Danville  road  makes 
the  transnational  line  96  miles  shorter  than  the  Knoxville 
or  Wilmington  routes.^ 

The  Danville  connection  bill  v/as  set  for  Tuesday,  the 
28th  of  December,  mid-holiday  season.  The  attack  was 
centered  upon  the  leader,  Governor  Morehead,  whose  speech 
was  long  continued.  It  came  up  again  for  second  reading 
on  January  10,  1859,  and  indeed  it  seemed  to  be  before  the 
House  in  some  form  much  of  the  time.  The  bill  was  known 
as  "House  Bill,  92,  to  charter  the  Greensboro  and  Danville 
Railroad  Company:"  and  it  was  in  committee  of  the  whole 

1  Greensboro  Patriot  of  Dec  24,  1858. 


350  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

almost  every  day.  On  Wednesday,  January  12,  1859,  it  was 
again  continued,  Speaker  Settle's  remarks  for  it  being  fol- 
lowed by  Mr.  Green  of  Franklin  county  in  reply;  "after 
which,"  says  the  Raleigh  Register  editor,  who  was,  in  this 
matter  at  least,  inimical  to  the  "link,"  "Mr.  Dortch  took  the 
floor  and  gave  Governor  Morehead  a  complete  dressing." 
Mr,  Norwood  took  the  floor  on  Thursday  and  was  followed 
by  Mr.  Bridgers.  These  attacks  were  continued  on  Friday 
and  on  Saturday,  whereupon  Governor  Morehead  rose, 
and  even  the  editor  who  thought  the  "Old  War  Horse" 
had  received  "a  complete  dressing"  was  compelled  to  say, 
in  his  report  of  it,  that  "it  was  an  admirable  one  of  its  kind !" 
Some  interesting  inside  history  of  the  appearance  of  a 
Rockingham  Coal  Fields  railroad  bill,  after  the  Greensboro 
and  Danville  bill  was  rejected  is  given  by  the  Fayetteville 
Observer.  It  seems  that  Rockingham  county.  Governor 
Morehead's  old  home  and  seat  of  his  great  Leaksville  plant, 
wanted  the  link  as  much  as  he  did ;  but,  as  it  was  safely 
Democratic,  the  eastern  leaders  thought  they  could  hold  it, 
until  they  saw  how  much  in  earnest  that  county  really  was. 
To  save  the  county  to  Governor  Ellis,  the  Wilmington  mem- 
ber of  the  House  introduced  this  bill  and  got  it  passed; 
whereupon  the  Wilmington  Senator  so  amended  it  that  he 
thought  Governor  Morehead  and  his  friends  would  reject  it 
— which  they  did  not  choose  to  do!  For  an  act  passed  two 
years  before,  to  charter  a  road  from  High  Point,  via  Salem 
and  Germanton  to  Virginia  would  enable  a  Danville  con- 
nection to  be  made,  and  what  was  more  the  Salem  road  went 
directly  by  Governor  Morehead's  steam  mills  there,  and  both 
roads  helped  his  lands  and  plants  at  Leaksville  and  his  great 
possessions  at  Holtsburg  on  the  Yadkin  River !  The 
Observer  charged  Wilmington  with  mistakes  all  the  way 
along:  the  Weldon  road  which  takes  8000  bales  of  cotton 
out  of  Edgecombe  alone  to  a  Virginia  port ;  the  Manchester 
road  which  carries  produce  off  to  Charleston ;  and  finally 
the  Charlotte  &  Rutherford  would  be  a  South  Carolina 
feeder  still  more — two  roads  for  Virginia  and  two  for 
South  CaroHna!' 

1  Greensboro  Patriot,  14th  Oct,  1859. 


RAILWAYS  WEST  AND  NORTH  351 

Several  reports  of  the  great  debate  on  the  "Danville  Con- 
nection," as  it  was  called,  in  January,  1859,  exist,  but  this 
from  the  Fayetteville  Observer,  is  brief,  friendly  and  pic- 
turesque: "He  [Governor  Morehead]  had  been  assailed  by 
Bridgers  of  Edgecombe,  Dortch  of  Wayne,  and  other  lead- 
ing Democrats,  opponents  of  the  Danville  Connection.  Mr. 
Bridgers  had  imputed  an  'avaricious  spirit'  to  the  Governor. 
In  reply  he  said  that  he  had  invested  eighty-seven  thousand 
dollars  in  railroads  for  the  improvement  of  North  Carolina. 
He  desired  to  know  how  much  the  gentleman  from  Edge- 
combe had  thus  invested?  'Do  you  desire  an  answer  now?' 
said  Mr.  Bridgers.  "Certainly!'  And  Mr.  Bridgers  replied 
that  he  owned  one  share  (nominal  value,  $100)  in  the  Wil- 
mington and  Weldon  road  (which  runs  through  his  own 
county).  Would  that  we  had  more  'avaricious'  spirits  as 
Governor  Morehead,  and  fewer  such  patriots  as  Mr.  Bridg- 
ers. If  we  only  had  Governor  Morehead  in  this  town,  we 
could  guarantee  the  speedy  completion  of  the  Coalfields 
Railroad,  with  or  without  State  aid.  .  .  .  Having  thus 
effectually  disposed  of  Mr.  Bridgers,  it  was  Mr.  Dortch's 
turn  next.  This  gentleman  had  delivered  himself  of  some 
'startling  developments'  in  regard  to  extravagance  on  the 
North  Carolina  Railroad  whilst  under  the  Presidency  of 
Governor  Morehead.  This  of  course  derived  great  weight 
from  the  fact  Mr.  Dortch  had  long  been  one  of  the  State's 
Directors  in  the  road,  and  was  therefore  presumed  to  have 
availed  himself  of  his  opportunities  to  secure  full  and 
reliable  information  on  all  the  financial  operations  of  the 
Governor.  He  was  one  of  those  sentinels  placed  by  Demo- 
cratic Governors  to  see  that  the  state  had  justice  done  to  her. 
He  arraigned  Governor  Morehead  before  the  House  as 
guilty  of  extravagant  expenditures  of  the  State's  money. 
And  what  reply  could  the  culprit  make  to  a  charge  from  such 

a  high  and  well  informed  authority?     He    [Gov.  M ] 

quietly  produced  a  Report  from  an  Examining  Committee, 
certifying  that  the  North  Carolina  Railroad  was  the  cheapest 
built  railroad  in  the  country.  And  to  this  Report  was 
signed  the  name  of  this  same  Mr.  Dortch !  And  so  on 
through  the  catalogue  of  Gov.  Morehead's  accusers.      He 


352  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

brushed  them  off  Hke  mosquitoes — those  lean  fellows  who 
keep  up  a  prodigious  buzzing  without  having  the  power  to 
sting!  .  .  .  Long  live  the  old  patriot  and  statesman, 
to  labor  for  his  State  and  to  confound  his  enemies,  whether 
political  or  personal !" 

Another  report  says  of  it:  "The  debate  of  which  I 
have  spoken  might  be  said  to  have  been  closed  by  a  three 
hour  speech  from  Governor  Morehead,  though  Mr.  Nor- 
wood followed  him  for  about  an  hour.  Morehead  occupied, 
part  of  two  days  in  its  delivery.  His  personal  character 
had  been  assailed,  the  spirit  of  his  youth  was  roused,  and 
never  before,  nor  will  there  again  this  season,  be  heard  in 
this  capitol  such  a  speech.  It  towered  far  above  anything 
we  have  ever  heard  there.  Always  impressive  and  speaking 
with  ability,  his  full  powers  were  then  brought  out.  We 
have  never  heard  such  withering  sarcasm,  more  forcible 
arguments,  or  more  finished  and  entrancing  eloquence.  A 
member  opposed  to  him  in  politics,  and  on  this  question, 
remarked  to  us  that,  he  always  thought  Mr.  Morehead  was 
the  first  man  in  North  Carolina,  and  now  he  knew  it !  .  .  . 
All  have  heard  Gov.  Morehead,  in  one  or  another  of  the 
many  great  efforts  of  his  life,  but  this  was  the  crown  upon 
all.'" 

To  this  account,  let  the  memories  of  a  young  man  of 
that  time  be  added :  "I  knew  Governor  Morehead,"  wrote 
J.  S.  T.  Baird  of  Asheville,  on  April  29,  1912,  "and  had  the 
honor  to  serve  with  him  in  the  House  of  Commons  (as  we 
then  called  it)  at  the  session  of  1858-9.  I  was  then  quite  a 
young  man,  and  for  courtesies  and  kindnesses  shown  me  by 
him  during  the  session,  I  learned  to  hold  him  in  very  high 
esteem.  Though  differing  in  our  political  views,  he  was 
nevertheless  kind  to  give  me  much  valuable  advice  and  as- 
sistance in  my  legislative  duties.  While  there  were  quite 
a  number  of  able  men  of  the  Whig  party  in  the  House  at 
that  session,  such  as  W.  N.  H.  Smith,  David  Outlaw,  John 
Kerr,  Atlas  J.  Dargan,  O.  H.  Dockery,  Tod  R.  Caldwell, 
and   others.  Governor   Alorehead   stood  preeminent  above 

^  Clipping  in  possesson  of  Mrs.  W.  R.  Walker,  Spray,  N.  C. 


RAILWAYS  WEST  AND  NORTH  353 

them  all  and  was  their  recognized  leader.  Col.  Bridgers 
was  among  the  ablest  of  the  Democratic  members  and  shared 
the  leadership  with  such  men  as  Ransom,  Dortch,  Flemming 
and  others.  There  was  much  attempted  railroad  legislation 
at  that  session.  Governor  Morehead,  who,  during  his  ad- 
ministration as  Governor  many  years  before  had  shown 
himself  a  staunch  friend  and  promoter  of  railroad  building 
in  the  state,  was  friendly  to  about  all  schemes  that  were 
presented  at  that  session,  while  Colonel  Bridgers  was  not 
so  much  so.  The  people  of  this  section  [western]  of  the 
state  were  deeply  concerned  and  were  making  strenuous 
efforts  for  the  extension  of  railroads  through  our  mountain 
country,  but  there  was  much  opposition  by  members  from 
the  east  and  other  sections  of  the  state.  I  am  not  positive, 
but  my  recollection  is  that  it  was  while  the  extension  of  the 
Western  North  Carolina  Railroad  was  under  discussion 
that  Colonel  Bridgers  made  his  attack  on  the  railroad  record 
of  Governor  Morehead.^  After  the  lapse  of  fifty-four  years, 
it  is  impossible  for  me  to  recall  many  of  the  incidents  of  the 
debate,  but  this  much  I  do  remember :  that  Colonel  Bridgers' 
attack  on  Governor  Morehead  was  futile  and  did  the  Gov- 
ernor no  harm,  for  he  vindicated  himself  in  the  most  thor- 
ough manner.  ...  I  cannot  close  this  without  again 
expressing  the  many  pleasing  recollections  that  I  have  of 
Governor  Morehead,  as  well  as  the  great  admiration  I  had 
for  him.  Truly  he  was  a  great  and  good  man,  and  his 
venerable  form  and  benign  features  are  ever  before  my 
mental  vision,  while  the  memory  of  his  many  kind  and 
courteous  acts  is  forever  enshrined  within  my  heart.  He 
deserves  to  stand  high  on  the  roll  of  those  whose  names  and 
whose  character  have  shed  lustre  upon  the  pages  of  North 
Carolina's  history."^ 

His  great  speech  in  this  most  notable  debate,  however, 
was  unable  to  overcome  the  eastern  vote,  and  the  second 
reading,  on  Saturday,  January  15,  1859,  was  lost  by  a  vote 
of  65  nays  and  Z7  yeas,  but  one  of  which  yeas  was  east  of 

1  As  has  been  seen  it  was  the  Greensboro  &  Danville  line,  or  "connection" 
witli  the  latter  place,  instead. 

^  Letter  to  R.  D.  W.  Connor.  N.  C.  Historical  Commission,  Misc.  Papers, 
Ser.  1,  VoL  IV,  p.  108. 


354  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Raleigh,  namely  of  Beaufort  county.  Guilford's  three 
votes  were  the  highest  from  any  one  county,  Davidson, 
Wilkes  and  Mecklenburg  following  with  two,  while  Rowan, 
Cumberland,  Harnett,  Caswell,  Rutherford,  Robeson  and 
Beaufort  were  divided. 

This  was  not  the  end  of  the  battle,  however,  for  three 
days  later,  on  January  18,  1859,  the  Internal  Improvement 
Committee,  of  which  Governor  Morehead  was  a  member, 
reported  out  a  substitute  for  the  Greensboro  and  Danville 
bill,  recommending  its  passage.  On  consideration  of  the 
Chatham  Railroad  bill  on  January  21st,  Mr.  Caldwell  of 
Guilford  county  offered  an  amendment  giving  the  road  power 
to  build  also  between  Greensboro  and  Danville,  which  was 
promptly  defeated  by  74  to  25,  but  the  bill  was  passed. 
Instantly  Mr.  Simpson's  substitute  bill,  No.  92,  was  called 
up  for  third  reading,  but  the  "link"  people  didn't  want  it 
then,  and  got  an  adjournment.  It  was  called  up  again  next 
day,  whereupon  the  enemies  of  it  began  to  offer  amendments 
designed  to  kill  it:  connection  with  any  Virginia  road  to 
work  forfeiture,  even  if  by  stage  or  other  means ;  it  should 
not  carry  passengers,  except  free  negroes  entering  the 
State  (!);  and  freight  or  passengers  could  not  be  carried 
from  the  Central  road  to  the  Virginia  road.  It  was  then 
passed  third  reading  and  the  name  changed  to  the  "Rock- 
ingham Coal  Fields  Company."  This  passed  second  read- 
ing in  the  Senate  on  February  14,  1859.  where  one  Senator 
saw  in  it  a  purpose  to  get  a  railroad  from  Greensboro  to 
Danville  without  connections  at  Danville,  in  expectation  of 
applying  to  a  future  legislature  for  the  right  to  connect,  and 
sought  an  amendment  making  such  application  work  for- 
feiture of  charter,  but  this  was  rejected.  Senator  Ashe 
secured  an  amendment  keeping  the  new  line  twenty  miles 
from  the  Central  road,  and  it  passed  second  reading  and 
also  third  reading  23  to  17.  Then  its  title  was  changed  to 
the  "Dan  River  Railroad  Company"  and  the  House  was 
asked  to  concur,  which  it  promptly  did.  It  opened  the  Dan 
River  coal  fields  to  the  Danville  and  Richmond  road. 

Governor  Morehead  did  other  useful  things  in  the  ses- 
sion of  1858-9  as  a  member  of  the  Commons,  but  this  battle 


RAILWAYS  WEST  AND  NORTH  355 

so  overshadowed  all  others  that  they  were  eclipsed  in  public 
attention.  This  coal-fields  road  was  in  no  sense  a  "link'' 
although  it  went  down  to  the  region  of  Governor  Morehead's 
properties  at  Leaksville,  and  really  gave  him  an  outlet  for 
his  Rockingham  county  plants.  The  echoes  of  this  battle 
continued  for  months  afterwards,  because  it  was  of  great 
concern  to  the  whole  Atlantic  seaboard  states  as  the  com- 
pletion of  a  trans-national  line  from  Maine  to  New  Orleans. 
It  will  be  well  to  note  one  or  two  most  interesting  comments, 
choosing  one  from  Richmond  and  one  from  Fayetteville : 
In  June,  1859,  ''A  Virginian"  wrote  to  the  Richmond  Whig 
the  following  letter  on  Governor  Morehead  and  enclosed 
one  from  the  Fayetteville  Observer  on  the  same  subject, 
requesting  its  publication,  and  which  follov»'s  his  own :  He 
says  the  latter  letter  is  about  Governor  Morehead  "who  has 
done  more  to  develop  the  resources  of  his  native  [  ?]  Com- 
monwealth, and  to  aid  the  deserving  poor  people  around  him, 
than  has  been  effected  by  all  the  other  public  men  of  North 
Carolina  together. 

"Gifted  by  nature  with  wonderful  mental  and  physical 
powers,  and  with  unsurpassed  industry,  enterprise  and  pub- 
lic spirit,  he  has,  through  a  long  life,  devoted  all  his  ener- 
gies to  the  improvement  of  the  various  interests  of  his  state. 
Nor  has  he  been  wanting  in  efforts  to  unite  Virginia  and 
North  Carolina  by  the  strong  ties  of  reciprocal  interest  and 
mutual  benefit. 

"His  liberal  subscription  to  the  Richmond  and  Danville 
Railroad  and  his  Herculean  efforts  in  the  Legislature  of  his 
State  to  procure  a  charter  for  a  connecting  link  between 
that  improvement  and  the  North  Carolina  Central  road, 
whilst  they  subjected  him  to  the  grossest  injustice  and  to  the 
most  malignant  opposition,  on  the  part  of  those  who  are  op- 
posed to  the  connection,  have  won  for  him  a  name  and  fame 
which  his  opponents  may  envy,  but  to  which  they  can  never 
attain.  ...  he  stands  before  his  admiring  countrymen 
as  a  patriot  of  enlarged  views,  whose  comprehensive  grasp 
takes  in,  not  only  all  of  his  beloved  Commonwealth,  but  looks 
also  to  the  good  of  his  sister  States.  As  the  great  advocate 
and  patron  of  internal   improvements,   he  may  be  justly 


356  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

regarded  as  the  De  Witt  Clinton  of  the  South.  It  may  truly 
be  said,  that  such  a  man  as  John  M.  Morehead  is  not  only 
an  ornament  to  his  State,  but  a  benefactor  to  his  species. 

"But  to  the  extract  referred  to:" 

The  Fayetteville  writer  tells  of  a  visit  to  Leaksville 
and  Governor  Morehead's  plant  there:  "Being  attracted 
by  the  magnitude  and  number  of  buildings,  I  stopped  a  few 
hours  to  look  around.  Here  was  a  large  stone  building,  the 
cotton  factory,  constructed  in  the  most  substantial  manner, 
and  of  the  most  durable  materials.  It  is  situated  at  the 
mouth  of  a  magnificent  canal,  leading  from  Smith's  river, 
and  operated  by  the  largest  and  finest  metal  wheel  that  I 
have  ever  seen.  Near  by  are  the  oil  mills,  flour  mills,  and 
saw  mill — all  operated  by  the  water  of  the  same  canal, 
which  appears  to  have  a  fall  of  at  least  25  feet,  and  at  a 
slight  expense  could  be  made  to  propel  millions  of  dollars 
worth  of  machinery.^ 

"After  surveying  this  immense  water  power  and  canal, 
capable  of  being  made  to  control  the  entire  current  of 
Smith's  river,  I  looked  upon  the  hills  that  jut  in  towards 
the  manufacturing  establishments,  to  see  the  neat  and  sub- 
stantial dwellings — some  brick  and  others  frame — where  the 
hundreds  of  laborers  and  their  families  live,  who  earn  hon- 
est and  respectable  support  from  the  capital  here  invested. 
The  store-house  and  factory  appear  to  have  been  built  some 
years,  and  all  the  establishments  and  plans  show  that  in- 
telligent enterprise  and  capital  have  accomplished  much 
here  for  the  benefit  of  the  country,  when  such  improvements 
were  in  their  infancy  in  North  Carolina.  Seeing  such  re- 
sults from  the  sagacity  and  enterprise  of  an  individual  when 
there  was  no  prospect  of  railroads  in  that  portion  of  North 
Carolina,  I  was  naturally  led  to  reflect,  what  this  portion  of 
the  State  might  become,  with  its  rich  lands,  abounding  in 
iron  and  coal,  and  its  immense  water  power,  with  the  ad- 
vantages of  a  railroad?  But  this  would  not  suit  your  Wil- 
mington neighbors ;  and  hence  the  people  of  that  portion  of 

^  Governor  Morehead,  at  this  time,  had  steam  mills  at  Salem  (now  Winston- 
Salem),  thousands  of  acres  in  Rockingham  with  this  great  plant  at  Leaksville, 
and  considerable  possessions  at  Holtsburg  on  the  Yadkin  river. — Greensboro 
Patriot  of  14th  Oct,  1859. 


RAILWAYS  WEST  AND  NORTH  357 

North  Carolina  must  be  denied  the  benefits  and  blessings 
resulting  from  such  improvement.  In  reflecting  upon  what 
I  have  witnessed  and  learned,  I  am  satisfied  that  no  man  in 
the  State  of  North  Carolina  has  been  more  identified  with 
her  material  interests  than  J.  M.  Morehead.  He  has  been, 
and  probably  is  now,  identified  with  the  farming,  manufac- 
turing, mechanical,  mercantile  and  educational  pursuits  of 
the  people  of  the  state.  He  knows  their  wants  and  interests, 
perhaps,  better  than  any  other  man.  He  has  done  more  to 
give  impulse  and  success  to  the  internal  improvement  system 
than  any  man  in  the  State.  The  North  Carolina  Railroad 
would  never  have  been  constructed  had  he  not  taken  hold 
of  it  and  brought  his  potent  influence  to  raise  the  means 
and  put  the  work  forward  almost  to  completion.  Within 
six  months  or  less  he  would  have  had  the  road  completed. 
But  here  low  party  malignity  had  to  do  its  dirty  work. 
It  forced  him  to  resign  that  position  which  he  had  filled  with 
such  signal  ability,  that  it  might  reap  the  rewards  due  to 
another.  It  was  an  act  of  black  ingratitude,  and  some  of  its 
perpetrators  are  now  reaping  its  bitter  fruits. 

"He  did  more  to  build  the  Atlantic  and  North  Carolina 
Railroad  than  any  man  in  the  State.  Altho'  he  was  not  the 
President,  he  subscribed  the  money  and  did  the  work,  and 
today,  I  am  told,  owns  more  stock  in  the  road  than  all  other 
stockholders  collectively.  Yet  he  has  never  even  been 
tendered  a  Director's  place  in  the  company.  This  is  base 
ingratitude  and  places  the  company  in  no  enviable  light, 
altho'  I  do  not  suppose  that  Governor  Morehead  wants  any 
position  on  the  road. 

"During  the  sitting  of  the  last  Legislature,  there  was 
developed  a  bitter  partizan  spirit  against  him.  He  had  mind 
and  capacity  enough  in  his  objects  of  legislation  to  compre- 
hend the  whole  state  of  North  Carolina.  He  was  for  giving 
the  additional  aid  necessary  to  complete  the  Albemarle  and 
Chesapeake  Canal ;  he  was  for  going  forward  with  the 
Western  Extension  [of  the  N.  C.  R.  R.]  ;  he  advocated  the 
Danville  connection ;  and  he  was  for  the  Fayetteville  Coal 
Fields  Road  as  well  as  other  useful  improvements  to  the 
State.     His  more  comprehensive  and  statesman-like  policy 


358  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

did  not  suit  all  the  local  and  petty  interests  represented  in  the 
Legislature,  and  an  attempt  was  made  to  hunt  him  down 
by  those  pigmy  politicians  and  factionists. 

"Men  who  would  not  dare  to  meet  him  in  discussion  in  the 
legislative  halls  or  elsewhere  by  misrepresentation  and  slan- 
der, by  whiskey  and  ground-peas  in  the  lobbies,  hotels  and 
groceries,  endeavored  to  do  their  dirty  work  of  robbing  an 
honest  man  of  his  good  name  and  just  fame.  The  decree 
had  gone  forth  that  Morehead  delendus  est. 

"His  public  and  private  life  were  ransacked  to  find  some 
fault  or  blemish  with  which  to  damn  him.  Truly  'monies 
parturiimt  et  ridiculiis  mus  nascitur.'  The  result  is  too  well 
known.  How  like  chaff  before  the  wind  he  scattered  the 
imputations  of  his  adversaries,  and  how  triumphantly  he 
vindicated  himself,  and  put  to  the  blush  every  accuser,  is 
too  familiar  to  your  readers. 

"His  speech,  both  in  eloquence  and  its  vindication  of 
truths  would  have  immortalized  almost  any  statesman ;  but 
to  J.  M.  Morehead,  who  had  proved  the  victor  in  an  hundred 
hard-fought  battles,  it  was  only  one  among  the  many  tri- 
umphs of  his  life,  when  his  opponents  dared  to  meet  him 
face  to  face.     .     .     . 

"North  Carolina  has  but  few  such  men  as  J.  M.  More- 
head.  A  statesman  of  manly  bearing  and  frank  views  on  all 
questions — tried  in  the  severe  ordeals  of  public  and  private 
life,  he  is  known  to  possess  the  integrity  of  a  Cato;  a  man 
of  brains  and  of  great  practical  intellect,  identified  with 
almost  every  honorable  and  liberal  pursuit  in  the  country, 
and  having  devoted  the  best  of  his  life  and  services  to  the 
improvement,  both  public  and  private,  of  the  State.  These 
are  qualities  which  justly  endear  him  to  his  fellowmen,  and 
well  may  they  be  proud  of  him. 

"It  was  these  high  attributes  of  character,  illustrated 
through  his  whole  life  that  caused  the  people  to  elect  him 
twice  triumphantly  to  the  Gubernatorial  chair  by  such  ma- 
jorities as  no  other  man  has  ever  received,  with  parties  so 
equally  divided  and  the  strongest  opposition  that  could  be 
arrayed  against  him.  He  has  never  asked  the  people  for 
office,  which  they  did  not  confer;  indeed,  he  never  sought 


RAILWAYS  WEST  AND  NORTH  359 

office,  but  has  often  served  in  public  positions  at  the  sacrifice 
of  his  individual  interests.  And  when  partizan  feeling  shall 
have  subsided  and  the  revilers  and  private  traducers  of  his 
just  fame  and  great  name  shall  have  moulded  into  dust, 
and  been  forgotten,  posterity  will  cherish  the  name  and 
memory  of  J.  M.  Alorehead,  and  rank  him  with  North  Caro- 
lina's most  gifted  statesmen  and  greatest  benefactors.'" 

Such  was  the  result  of  the  great  fight  for  the  last  link  in 
a  trans-national  Piedmont  railway.  And  what  was  it? 
The  result  was  that,  if  the  Richmond  and  Danville  road  ex- 
tended its  line  to  the  Dan  River  Railroad  whose  terminus 
would  be  at  Leaksville,  then  the  "link"  still  necessary  to  the 
trans-national  line  would  be  reduced  to  but  twenty-eight 
miles — the  distance  between  Leaksville  and  Greensboro ! 
So  great  a  part  of  the  "link"  had  Governor  Morehead  se- 
cured in  the  past  ten  years !  And  then  he  went  back  to 
Morehead  City  to  continue  his  efforts  to  build  up  a  great 
port  terminal  of  the  North  Carolina  Railroad  "system"  as 
it  would  now  be  called.  For  was  not  the  Raleigh  &  Gaston 
road  now  a  part  of  the  "system?"  And  was  not  Wilmington 
and  the  Roanoke  valley  trying  to  make  the  Wilmington 
&  Weldon  a  part  of  it  likewise?  Now,  his  activities  at 
Morehead  City  were  like  a  great  symbolical  picture,  showing 
a  giant  building  a  mighty  port  terminal  metropolis  of  the 
commonwealth,  with  Wilmington,  a  rival,  beholding  it  and 
observing,  near  at  the  giant's  hand,  a  bludgeon  marked 
"Twenty-eight  miles  of  trans-national  link,  Greensboro  to 
Leaksville.  For  the  Dog-In-The-Manger,  who  can  neither 
eat  hay,  nor  allow  those  to  eat  it  who  can !"  For  such  Wil- 
mington was  considered  by  all  who  had  favored  the  sea-to- 
Tennessee  vertebral  railroad,  from  President  Caldwell  to 
Governor  Alorehead.  Would  Wilmington  and  the  Roanoke 
heed  the  warning?  Could  the  Cape  Fear  metropolis  sur- 
render her  primacy  to  a  program  avowedly  designed  to  dis- 
place her — even  though  it  was  also  designed  to  be  a  veritable 
unification  of  the  commonwealth — its  greatest  need  since  the 
Piedmont   became   populous?     It   was   not   in   human,   nor 

^  From  a  clipping  from  the  Richmond   Whig  in  possession  of  Mrs.   W.   R- 
Walker,  Spray,  N.  C. 


360  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

metropolitan  nature,  to  do  it ;  and  so  the  picture  of  the  giant 
creating  a  new  port  terminal  and  metropolis,  while  his 
Greensboro-Leaksville  bludgeon  lay  close  at  hand  as  a  warn- 
ing to  Wilmington,  still  stands,  late  in  1859 ;  while  a  storm 
is  brewing  beside  which,  a  hurricane  off  Hatteras  would  be 
a  mere  zephyr,  and  which  would  bring  disaster  to  both ! 

And  yet  as  soon  as  that  Assembly  of  1858-9  adjourned  in 
February,  Governor  Morehead  boarded  the  train  eastward 
for  Morehead  City  to  continue  building  a  great  unifying  port 
for  the  state. 

A  letter  from  Morehead  City,  dated  March  10,  1859,  and 
signed  "Beaufort,"  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  progress  there: 
"The  wharf,  as  you  know,  is  built  upon  iron  screw-piles — a 
novelty  in  this  country  as  well  as  Europe,  and  is  just 
finished.  And  the  warehouse  built  thereon,  and  the  whole 
structure  for  enclosing  the  wharf  are  raised  and  will  be 
under  cover  by  the  last  of  next  week.  The  arrangements 
here  for  loading  and  unloading  vessels  and  cars  are  superior 
to  anything  I  have  ever  witnessed,  either  North  or  South. 
The  warehouses,  being  some  fifty-five  feet  narrower  than  the 
wharf,  and  placed  nearer  one  side  of  the  same,  the  railroad 
track  forks  before  reaching  the  warehouse,  and  a  track  runs 
on  each  side  of  the  same  and  between  it  and  the  vessels 
lying  at  the  side  of  the  wharf;  so  that  if  the  cars  are  ready, 
the  goods  are  taken  directly  from  the  vessel,  and  put  directly 
on  board  the  cars  without  any  delay  or  cost.  If  cars  are 
not  ready,  the  goods  which  are  valuable  and  need  locking  up, 
are  carried  across  the  tracks,  and  put  in  the  warehouse  until 
the  cars  arrive.  Those  more  bulky  are  left  outside  the 
tracks  on  the  wharf,  though  not  exposed  to  the  weather,  as 
the  whole  is  under  cover,  and  enclosed  by  large  sliding  doors 
remaining  entirely  around  the  wharf. 

"Here  the  steamer  drawing  twenty  feet  of  water,  and 
the  locomotive  weighing  twenty  or  thirty  tons,  with  its  whole 
train,  may  be  along  side  each  other;  and  this,  too,  on  each 
side  of  the  wharf  at  the  same  time,  while  in  front  other 
vessels  may  be  loading  or  discharging  cargoes. 

"For  admirable  arrangement,  I  have  never  seen  any- 
thing to  compare  to  it.     And  it  reflects  great  credit  on  the 


RAILWAYS  WEST  AND  NORTH  361 

engineers,  who  planned  it  and  superintended  its  construc- 
tion ;  on  the  railroad  authorities  whose  wisdom  and  liberality 
have  done  so  much  to  facilitate  commerce,  and  to  the  con- 
tractors for  the  admirable  execution  of  the  work. 

"Three  vessels  are  lying  at  the  wharf,  loading  and  dis- 
charging cargoes,  to  wit : 

"Schr.  John  Clark,  Capt  Sull,  from  New  York,  with 
merchandise.  Cargo  discharged  and  loading  with  Naval 
Stores  and  wheat  for  New  York. 

"Schr.  E.  J.  Tabbot,  Capt.  Pegram,  from  Boston,  loaded 
with  lime ;  return  cargo  Naval  Stores. 

"Schr.  George  D.,  Capt.  Dill,  from  Charleston,  loaded 
with  salt,  and  to  load  with  Naval  Stores  for  Baltimore.  This 
vessel  ran,  as  I  am  informed,  from  Charleston  to  Morehead 
City  in  about  30  hours. 

"The  above  vessels  are  lying  at  the  wharf  loading  and 
discharging  cargoes. 

"A  barque  of  some  eight  hundred  tons  is  expected  here 
tomorrow  from  Baltimore,  chartered  to  take  five  thousand 
barrels  rosin  direct  to  Liverpool,  a  porton  of  the  cargo  being 
now  on  the  wharf. 

"Schr.  Oliver  H.  Lea  is  expected  here  in  a  day  or  two, 
with  merchandise  from  New  York  for  western   merchants. 

"A  freight  train  arrived  this  evening  with  fourteen 
loaded  cars,  and  to  load  back  with  merchandise,  salt  and  lime. 
Salt  at  90  cents  per  sack  and  lime  at  85  cents  per  barrel,  from 
vessels. 

"I  see  a  number  of  good  houses  going  up  and  the  popu- 
lation rapidly  increasing;  indeed  there  are  few  places  more 
changed  than  this  since  I  saw  it  some  twelve  months  ago. 

"I  found  your  townsman.  Gov.  Morehead,  here,  the 
founder  of  this  city,  the  builder  of  the  wharf  and  warehouse 
at  the  eastern  end  of  the  railroad.  He  was  giving  directions 
and  instructions  to  his  workmen,  some  thirty  in  number,  in 
his  usual  quiet  way.  He  is  evidently  gratified  with  this  con- 
summation of  his  wishes — the  connection  of  the  mountains 
and  the  ocean  railway. 

"I  shall  be  deceived  if  a  brilliant  future  does  not  await 
this  place. 


362  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

"I  saw  other  vessels  lying  in  the  harbor  at  a  distance ; 
but  learned  no  particulars  as  to  them.  If  I  remain  here  a 
few  days  I  may  write  you  again."^ 

Here  was  a  man  of  vision — a  man  who  had  some  time 
before  said  to  a  well-known  opponent :  "You  are  a  younger 
man  than  I  am,  and  have  not  yet  learned  that  in  politics,  as  in 
everything  else,  it  is  best  always  to  keep  cool  and  take  things 
easy.  ^ 

^  Greensboro  Patriot,  March  25,   1859. 

^  Social  Reminiscences  of  John  M.  Morehead  by  Mrs.  Mary  Bayard  Clarke. 
It  was  about  this  time  that  Governor  Morehead  had  his  portrait  painted  in 
1859  by  William  Garl  Broune.  Several  copies  were  made  by  the  artist  for 
various  children  and  the  Governor's  Mansion  at  Raleigh.  The  one  here  used 
as  frontispiece  is  in  possession  of  Major  John  Motley  Morehead  III,  at  his 
home,  "Blandwood,"  in  Rye,  N.  Y.  It  represents  the  Governor  with  the  charter 
of  the  North  Carolina  Central  Railroad  in  his  right  hand. 

A  note  at  this  point  may  conveniently  draw  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
pseudonym  "Carlton"  has  been  discovered  in  several  places,  too  late  for  cor- 
rection, as  "Carleton." 


XVII 

Defender  of  the  Union 

IN 

The  State  Senate 

AND 

Whig  National  Convention 

1859 

In  the  middle  of  October,  1859,  like  a  thunder-bolt  out 
of  a  clear  sky,  came  news  of  an  uprising  at  Harpers  Ferry, 
at  the  junction  of  the  Shenandoah  and  Potomac  rivers,  on 
the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  led  by  one  John  Brown, 
a  Kansas  fanatic,  maddened  by  the  long  bloody  struggle 
in  that  state  between  abolition  and  slave  factions,  who 
sought  to  start  a  violent  revolution  to  free  the  southern 
slaves.  The  old  Whig  and  "American"  or  "Opposition" 
element  in  North  Carolina  had  become  bitter  against  both 
"Black  Republicans"  and  Democrats  alike;  while  the  Demo- 
crats were  enraged  that  this  "Opposition"  was  unable  to 
see  that  there  was  now  no  longer  any  middle  ground  between 
"Black  Republicans"  and  the  Democrats,  for  any  opposition 
to  stand  on.  The  "Opposition,"  as  they  began  to  call 
themselves,  as  opposed  to  both  "Black  Republicans"  and 
Democrats  had  a  strong  voice  in  Senator  John  A.  Gilmer 
of  Guilford  county,  at  Washington,  and  the  more  bitter  the 
acts  of  the  "Black  Republicans"  and  Democrats  became,  the 
more  incensed  the  Whig  "Opposition"  became  against  both ! 
This  October  revolutionary  episode  kindled  the  flame  still 
higher.  Even  the  Raleigh  Register,  probably  leading  jour- 
nal of  the  "Opposition"  element,  had  an  editorial  on  No- 
vember 30,  1859,  that  was  very  significant,  remarking  that 
there  was  not  a  powder-mill  south  of  Delaware ;  not  a 
factory    for   arms    or    foundry    for   cannon    south   of    this 

363 


364  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

same  Harpers  Ferry,  and  yet  Virginia  and  Kentucky  had 
saltpetre  mines.  With  this  were  warnings  to  have  vokin- 
teers  in  each  county  and  at  least  three  arsenals  should  be 
established;  and  that  a  Northerner  on  a  Southern  street 
should  be  an  object  of  suspicion.  Commercial  indepen- 
dence from  the  north  was  advocated  early  in  December. 
The  execution  of  John  Brown  was  followed  by  renewed 
hatred  of  such  books  as  that  by  Hinton  Helper;  and  news 
began  to  arrive  of  Union  meetings  in  various  northern 
centers.  Brown,  however,  had  broken  as  many  ties  of 
union  between  north  and  south  in  a  day  nearly  as  had 
grown  by  slow  accretions  since  1776.  Like  a  flame  in  a 
wheat  field,  the  commercial  boycott  of  the  north  spread 
over  the  south.  The  secession  of  southern  medical 
students  in  the  great  medical  schools  of  Philadelphia 
nearly  disrupted  those  bodies  in  December.  Senator  Gil- 
mer and  others,  at  Washington,  were  trying  to  head  off  the 
mad  frenzy,  by  a  Union  party,  as  the  new  year  1860  ar- 
rived. 

While  these  events  were  proceeding  there  was  an  arrest 
in  Greensboro  of  Rev.  Daniel  Worth,  a  Wesleyan  Metho- 
dist, and  Democratic  Abolitionist,  who  was  charged  with 
spreading  Helper's  Impending  Crisis  and  inciting  to  insur- 
rection, and  the  trial  was  with  difficulty  kept  from  becoming 
a  mob. 

Late  in  January,  1860,  came  the  news  that  after  thirty- 
nine  ballots  in  the  national  House  of  Representatives,  a 
"Black  Republican"  had  been  chosen  speaker,  against  Rep- 
resentative Smith  of  North  Carolina,  "in  one  of  the 
fiercest  struggles  ever  witnessed  on  the  floor  of"  that  body. 
The  animus  of  the  fight  arose  from  bitterness  of  opposition 
to  John  Sherman  of  Ohio,  who  had  spoken  favorably  of 
Helper's  Impending  Crisis.  North  Carolina  was  especially 
bitter  against  this  book  in  the  slave-holding  parts  of  the 
commonwealth,  because  it  was  a  North  Carolina  product. 
Hinton  Rowan  Helper  was  a  native  of  Mocksville,  in  what 
is  now  Davie,  but  was  then  Rowan  county,  in  1829,  so  that  he 
was  a  young  man  of  but  twenty-six  years  when  it  was 
issued  in  1857.     The  Republican  party  used  it  as  a  cam- 


DEFENDER  OF  THE  UNION  365 

paign  document  and  during  the  first  four  years  nearly 
150,000  were  in  circulation.  It  was  dedicated  to  the  non- 
slaveholding  citizens  of  the  South,  of  whom  there  were  a 
great  many  in  this  general  region,  beside  the  Quakers,  who 
of  course  did  not  have  them.'  The  Moreheads  did  have 
them,  however;  yet  they  were  among  that  large  number 
in  the  South  who  would  have  been  glad  if  it  could  be  re 
moved  without  revolution  and  danger  of  uprisings  of  an 
ignorant  uncontrolled  race. 

On  January  24,  1860,  a  Whig  Opposition  meeting  was 
held  in  Greensboro,  at  which  Governor  Morehead  was 
present;  and  resolutions  were  passed  condemning  the  "rule 
or  ruin"  Democrats,  who  could  have  organized  the  lower 
House  at  Washington,  with  a  conservative  Southern  Whig, 
who  loved  the  Union,  but  preferred  to  see  a  "Black  Repub- 
lican" to  such  a  man!  They  applauded  Senator  John  A. 
Gilmer,  who  joined  with  such  men  as  Crittenden,  Harris, 
Conrad,  Clemmens  of  Tennessee,  Etheridge  and  similar 
patriotic  Union  leaders,  in  connection  with  a  late  Philadel- 
phia meeting  of  the  Executive  Committee.  They  also 
favored  the  Opposition  Convention  at  Raleigh  for  Washing- 
ton's Birthday,  next.  At  this  latter  gathering.  Governor 
Morehead  was  not  present,  but  this  body  selected  the 
defeated  Vice-President  William  A.  Graham,  as  their  first 
choice  for  the  Whig  Presidential  nomination  and  praised 
their  Congressmen  Smith,  Gilmer,  Vance  and  Leach  for 
their  conservative  course  in  the  late  struggles  at  Washing- 
ton. 

1  Helper's  book,  when,  republished,  had  added  to  it — what  was  not  in  the 
original  edition — a  "Compend"  of  recommendations:  (Just  who  was  responsible 
for  them  is  not  known.) 

"1st.  Thorough  organization  and  independent  political  action  on  the  part 
of   non-slaveholding   whites   of   the    South. 

"2nd.  Ineligibility  of  slaveholders — never  another  vote  to  the  trafficker  in 
human  flesh. 

"3rd.  No  co-operation  with  slaveholders  in  politics — no  fellowship  with  them 
in  religion — no  affiliation  with  them  in  society. 

"4th.  No  patronage  to  slaveholding  merchants — no  guestship  in  slave- 
waiting  hotels — no  fees  to  slaveholding  lawyers— no  employment  of  slaveholding 
physicians — no  audience  to   slaveholding  parsons. 

"5th.  No  recognition  of  pro-slavery  men  except  as  ruffians,  outlaws  and 
criminals." 

It  was  this  addition  to  the  reprint,  unknown  to  many  supporters  of  the 
book,  which,  in  itself,  contained  no  such  sentiments,  that  added  fuel  to  the 
flame  created  by  the  John  Brown  fire-brand.  Mrs.  Stowe's  book — Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin — which  had  been  circulating  since  1852 — had  no  such  influence  upon  the 
South,  of  course,  as  this  book  by  a  North  Carolinian,  especially  after  the  "Com- 
pend" appeared  in  it 


366  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

A  considerable  source  of  irritation,  especially  in  North 
Carolina,  was  added  to  this  in  May,  1860,  by  a  disagreement 
between  the  railroads  of  that  state  and  the  Postmaster  Gen- 
eral on  rates  for  mail  carrying,  in  which  all  the  roads 
refused  to  carry  the  mail,  except  the  Wilmington  &  Weldon. 
the  Atlantic  and  the  Western.  Thereupon  the  Post  Office 
Department  banned  those  parts  of  the  state,  refusing  to 
forward  their  mail.  Wagon  mail  carrying  had  to  be  resorted 
to  from  the  nearest  roads  that  did  carry. 

During  this  month,  on  ^lay  16,  1860,  the  "Opposition" 
held  its  national  meeting  at  Baltimore,  as  the  "National 
Constitutional  Union  Convention."  in  the  old  church  building 
at  the  corner  of  Fayette  and  North  Streets.  It  was  called 
to  order  by  Hon.  John  J.  Crittenden  of  Kentucky,  as  chair- 
man of  the  Executive  Committee.  Ex-Governor  Hunt  of 
New  York  was  made  President  of  the  Convention ;  and  the 
delegation  from  North  Carolina  was  headed  by  Governor 
John  Motley  Morehead  as  delegate-at-large.  General 
Coombs  of  Kentucky,  in  an  amusing  skit,  expressed  the 
attitude  of  the  Convention  by  offering  platforms  for  Re- 
publicans, Democrats  and  this  "Opposition"  to  them  both: 
"First,  then,"  said  he,  "for  the  harmonious  Democracy,  I 
propose  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions  of  1798-99 
— one  in  favor  of  excluding  slavery  from  the  territories, 
and  the  other  in  favor  of  forcng  it  into  them — [laughter] 
to  be  adopted  unanimously  without  debate,  under  the  previ- 
ous question,  and  no  questions  asked  afterwards. 
[Laughter.]  For  the  'irrepressible  conflictionist,'  about  to 
assemble  at  Chicago.  I  suggest  the  'Blue  Laws'  of  Connecti- 
cut ;  first  in  reference  to  the  right  of  a  man  to  kiss  his  w'ife 
on  Sunday — [laughter]  and  second,  in  reference  to  the 
burning  of  witches ;  provided  that  wives  shall  have  the  privi- 
lege to  be  kissed,  and  witches  to  be  burned.  [Laughter.] 
The  third  is  the  Constitution  as  it  is,  and  the  Union  under  it, 
now  and  forever.  [Immense  applause.]"  Governor  More- 
head's  first  activity  in  the  Convention  was  to  oppose  the  unit 
rule  and  to  insist  on  free  discussion.  There  were  ten  candi- 
dates in  the  field  on  the  first  ballot,  in  which,  under  Governor 
Morehead's   leadership,    North   Carolina   cast   her   full    10 


DEFENDER  OF  THE  UNION  "^1 

votes  for  Graham;  but  as  John  Bell  of  Tennessee  had  far 
the  most  votes  of  any  of  the  ten  candidates,  and  Graham 
was  fourth  in  number  [Bell,  Houston  of  Texas,  Everett  and 
Graham],  while  on  the  second  ballott  Bell  absorbed  many  of 
the  other  votes,  only  Houston  and  Graham  showing  any  in- 
crease at  all,  Arkansas  led  in  transferring  her  vote  to  Bell, 
and  was  followed  by  Mississippi,  Massachusetts,  North 
Carolina,  Virginia  and  the  rest  to  make  it  unanimous.  In 
the  presentation  of  Vice-Presidential  candidates  Governor 
Morehead,  following  Missouri,  Tennessee  and  New  York, 
announced  North  Carolina  as  for  Edward  Everett.  The 
Bell  and  Everett  ticket  was  the  choice  of  the  Convention  and 
they  were  announced  as  "The  only  National  Candidates  for 
President  and  Vice-President  in  the  United  States." 

With  the  echoes  of  the  Baltimore  Convention  scarcely 
silent,  the  contrasting  scenes  of  a  May  Day  celebration  on 
]\Iay  5,  1860,  were  being  enacted  in  Greensboro  by  the 
students  of  Edgeworth  Seminary.  Miss  Mary  Corinna 
Morehead,  the  Governor's  daughter,  was  to  be  crowned 
Queen  at  the  throne  erected  in  the  grove  of  the  school 
grounds.  It  was  at  5.30  P.  M.,  escorted  by  fourteen  Maids 
of  Honor,  ten  Floras,  with  flowers  to  scatter  in  her  path,  a 
Scepter  and  Crown  Bearer,  the  Queen,  with  Lady  Hope  and 
the  Archbishop  on  either  side,  approached  with  her  two 
First  Maids  of  Honor,  ten  Pages  and  the  Guilford  Grays. 
The  beautiful  ceremony  of  coronation  was  followed  by  the 
poetical  speech  of  the  Queen  and  her  presentation  of  a  flag 
to  the  Guilford  Grays  : 

*Tn  the  name  of  my  subjects,  the  fair  donors  of  Edge- 
worth,  I  present  this  banner  to  the  Guilford  Grays.  Fain 
would  we  have  it  a  banner  of  peace,  and  have  inscribed  upon 
its  graceful  folds  'Peace  on  earth  and  good  will  to  men;' 
for  our  womanly  nature  shrinks  from  the  horrors  of  war 
and  bloodshed.  But  we  have  placed  upon  it  'the  oak' — fit 
emblem  of  the  firm,  heroic  spirits  over  which  it  is  to  float. 
Strength,  energ)'  and  decision  mark  the  character  of  the 
sons  of  Guilford,  whose  noble  sires  have  taught  their  sons 
to  know  hut  one  fear — the  fear  of  doing  wrong. 

"Proudly  in  days  past  have  the  banners  of  our  country 


368  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

waved  over  yon  Battle-field,  where  our  fathers  fought  for 
freedom  from  a  tyrant's  power.  Their  motto,  'Union  is 
strength,'  and  we  their  daughters  would  have  this  our  banner 
unfurled  only  in  the  same  noble  cause,  and  quivering  through 
our  soft  Southern  breezes,  echo  the  same  glorious  theme, 
Union !    Union ! !" 

These  Grays  were  organized  but  a  few  months  before 
when  Southern  and  Northern  fanatics  were  threatening  the 
Union.  Ensign  Gorrell  in  his  speech  recalled  the  Brown 
raid  and  retaliatory  acts  of  the  South  that  called  them  into 
being  and  the  present  hope  that  it  had  all  subsided.' 

The  growing  crisis  in  both  State  and  national  affairs 
made  the  districts  and  counties  pick  out  their  strong  men 
for  the  next  Assembly,  In  the  36th  Senatorial  district  of 
North  Carolina — that  of  Governor  Morehead,  he  himself, 
was  put  up  for  the  State  Senate  and  in  August  elected  easily 
as  a  "Unionist."  Again,  however,  the  Democrats  had  a 
majority  of  12  in  the  Senate  and  10  in  the  House,  the 
"Unionists"  numbering  19  in  the  former  and  55  in  the  latter. 
Governor  Morehead,  as  a  Unionist,  like  the  rest  of  his 
party,  saw  no  reason  why  any  man,  with  the  requisite  num- 
ber of  votes,  should  not  be  inaugurated  President,  without 
any  danger  to  any  institution  protected  by  the  Constitution, 
be  he  even  the  "Black  Republican"  candidate,  Abraham  Lin- 
coln. They  had  no  fears  for  the  Constitution  even  under 
him ;  so  that  they  held  that  the  onus  would  rest  on  whomso- 
ever first  took  steps  of  revolution  or  secession,  as  Democrats 
were  so  commonly  threatening,  in  case  the  "Black  Repub- 
lican" candidate  should  be  elected.  This  was  the  national 
meaning  of  Governor  Morehead's  election  to  the  State  Sen- 
ate ;  but,  there  was  also  a  state  meaning  to  it ;  for  he  and  his 
followers,  who  had  secured  all  but  twenty-eight  miles  of 
the  trans-national  Piedmont  line — the  Greensboro-Leaks- 
ville  link,  had  no  notion  of  considering  the  outcome  of  the 
railway  battles  of  the  last  Assembly  as  final. 

The  breaking  up  of  political  families  now  extended  to  the 
Democracy  as  well  as  the  Whigs.     The  autumn  visit  of 

1  Greensboro  Patriot,  May   18,  1860. 


DEFENDER  OF  THE  UNION  369 

Stephen  A.  Douglas  to  Raleigh  brought  it  out  in  North 
Carolina  vividly.  The  Raleigh  Standard,  Senator  Cling- 
man  and  Governor  Ellis  espoused  the  cause  of  the  ''Little 
Giant,"  while  Weldon  N.  Edwards,  "the  political  executor 
of  Nathaniel  Macon"  was  so  against  Douglas  that  he  said 
he  would  prefer  the  election  of  Lincoln!  Then  there  was 
the  Breckenridge  elector  of  the  Raleigh  district,  Air. 
Venable,  who  joined  his  own  wing  of  the  party  in  declaring 
for  a  dissolution  of  the  Union,  if  the  "Black  Republican" 
from  Illinois  were  elected.  The  news  of  this  brought  a 
significant  comment  from  the  Bell  and  Everett  leading  North 
Carolina  organ,  the  Raleigh  Register,  when  it  said  that  if 
a  choice  between  the  two,  Douglas  and  Lincoln,  were  com- 
pulsory, it  would  unhesitatingly  be  for  "The  Little  Giant." 

The  "Opposition"  or  "Unionist"  candidate  for  Governor 
reduced  his  opponent's  majority  to  about  half  of  that  of 
Governor  Bragg;  which  shows  the  Unionist  strength  in 
North  Carolina  at  this  critical  period ;  for  a  gubernatorial 
majority  of  but  6093  in  a  vote  of  112,702  for  the  whole  state 
— 59,396  Democrat  and  53,303  Unionist — is  a  remarkable 
Unionist  showing.  And  Guilford  county  led  all  the  rest  in  a 
majority  of  2137  to  457,  among  others  with  largest  ma- 
jorities being  Iredell,  Wilkes,  Stanly,  Randolph  and  Beau- 
fort counties.  By  the  accompanying  map  it  will  be  seen 
that,  in  a  general  way,  the  Unionist  counties  were  a  great 
block  central  and  westward  from  and  including  Raleigh, 
with  another  block  generally  from  Newbern  northeastwardly. 
Many  counties  on  both  sides,  however,  were  close.  In  a  gen- 
eral way,  also,  the  Democrats  had  the  great  eastern  central 
block  on  both  sides  of  the  Wilmington  &  Weldon  Railroad 
and  the  Roanoke  valley — the  regions  of  great  plantations 
and  large  slave-holdings. 

Between  this  date  and  the  November  national  election, 
the  fear  of  the  "Black  Republican"  success  increased,  and 
a  consequent  increase  of  disunion  expression  and  actual 
preparation  by  the  organization  of  "Minute  Men."  "Al- 
ready the  effects  of  disunion  threats  are  manifesting  them- 
selves," says  the  Raleigh  Register  of  November  14,  1860. 
"Negroes  have  gone  down  30  per  cent,  and  soon  other  prop- 


370  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

erty  will  begin  to  depreciate.  And  for  what? — a  miserable 
abstraction.  Should  an  attempt  be  made  to  execute  these 
threats,  men  now  wealthy  will  be  reduced  to  poverty." 
The  national  election  confirmed  their  worst  fears,  although 
the  Raleigh  Standard,  the  Breckenridge  leader  in  a  Breck- 
enridge  State,  was  for  accepting  the  result  lawfully.  The 
Douglas  ticket  had  but  little  support  in  North  Carolina  and 
there  was  but  little  change  in  totals  from  those  of  the 
August  gubernatorial  vote ;  a  few  counties  changed,  by  slight 
vote,  to  Bell,  but  Raleigh's  county  changed  to  Breckenridge, 
while  the  counties,  in  many  cases  were  so  close,  that  the 
totals  for  the  state  were  not  greatly  different  from  the 
August  gubernatorial  results.  Therefore,  although  North 
Carolina  went  for  Breckenridge  and  Lane,  her  leading 
Democratic  editor  being  for  lawful  acceptance  of  the  result, 
it  can  readily  be  seen  that  this  was  a  Unionist  state — at  this 
moment.  The  Raleigh  Register  charged  South  Carolina 
with  a  purpose  to  secede  in  order  that,  Georgia  following, 
the  reduced  Southern  representation  in  Congress  would 
leave  the  "Black  Republicans"  in  control  and  forced  to  do 
something  that  w^ould  drive  the  rest  of  the  South  along  with 
those  two  States !  For  the  whole  North  above  New  Jersey, 
Maryland,  Kentucky  and  Missouri  went  overwhelmingly 
for  Lincoln,  carrying  the  country  almost  two  to  one. 

This  was  the  situation  on  November  19,  1860,  when  the 
Assembly  met  in  the  capitol  at  Raleigh  and  Ex-Governor, 
now  Senator  Morehead,  took  his  seat  in  the  north  Senate 
Chamber.  The  whole  South  was  in  a  state  of  convulsion, 
financially,  politically,  industrially,  educationally — a  crisis 
even  before  secession  was  actually  begun.  Senator  John 
Motley  Morehead  was  trying  to  keep  his  head  and  thereby 
aid  the  state  in  doing  the  same  thing.  He  presented  two 
bills  in  an  ordinary  way  as  though  nothing  had  happened. 
He  was  put  on  the  Committees  on  Internal  Improvement, 
Education,  and  Privileges  and  Elections;  and  yet  Governor 
Ellis'  message  was  essentially  a  secessionist  one,  and  the 
Clerk  of  the  House  of  Commons  had  even  modified  the  oath 
of  ofiice  of  members  in  that  direction.  Governor  Ellis 
recommended  both  a  State  Convention  and  a  Southern  Con- 


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DEFENDER  OF  THE  UNION  371 

ference — on  the  basis  of  "in  the  Union  if  possible,  out  of  it 
if  necessary."  Union  meetings  were  held  in  various  parts 
of  the  State,  but  it  was  December  7th,  before  a  noticeable 
ebullition  occurred  in  the  Senate,  when  Senator  Turner  of 
Orange,  made  a  striking  speech  in  which  he  said:  "The 
people  of  North  Carolina  are  not  ready  for  disunion;  nor 
are  they  ready  to  be  chained  to  the  car  of  South  Carolina  and 
be  dragged  out  of  the  Union  into  discord  and  civil  war. 
Senators  will  find  that  the  Union  men  of  North  Carolina 
will  take  a  firm,  fixed,  immovable  stand  for  the  Union  of  the 
States,  and  the  Constitutional  rights  of  each  of  the  States, 
and  no  power  can  drive  them  from  it,  short  of  the  bayonet 
and  sword." 

It  was  on  Thursday,  December  13,  1860,  that  Governor 
Morehead  first  made  himself  felt  in  a  speech  on  Senator 
Turner's  amendment  to  a  resolution  regarding  a  conference 
with  South  Carolina.  "Mr.  Morehead  addressed  the  Senate 
at  some  length  in  an  able  and  eloquent  manner,"  says  the 
Register  reporter.  "He  said  that  he  opposed  this  confer- 
ence with  South  Carolina,  because  she  did  not  want  to  confer 
with  any  State;  that  if  she  wishes  to  go  out  of  the  Union, 
let  her  go;  but  when  she  wishes  a  conference  with  us,  and 
she  respectfvilly  asks  a  conference,  then  we  will  confer  with 
her.  He  thought  that  North  Carolina's  being  so  alarmed 
about  a  dissolution  of  the  Union  would  destroy  all  the  moral 
effect  of  the  secession  of  the  State  of  South  Carolina. 
He  took  a  strong  ground  against  the  right  of  a  state  to  secede 
from  the  Union,  though  he  acknowledged  an  inherent  right 
of  revolution  in  all  men  and  all  governments;  but  if  a  state 
did  secede,  there  was  no  provision  in  the  Constitution  for 
forcing  her  into  the  Union,  because  such  an  event  was  not 
contemplated  by  the  f  ramers  of  that  instrument.  He  thought 
the  Union  could  yet  be  saved.  There  was  already  a  return- 
ing sense  of  justice  in  the  Northern  States."  This  address 
was  answered  by  Senator  Brown,  who,  in  return,  was  replied 
to  by  the  Guilford  county  Senator.  The  resolutions  were 
abandoned  the  next  day. 

Events  came  swift  and  fast  as  the  new  year,  1861, 
opened.     The  United  States  ports  at  Charleston  and  even 


Zn  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

below  Wilmington  were  among  the  first  objects  of  attack. 
By  January  14,  1861,  the  Senate  passed  resolutions  asking 
the  President  to  withdraw  troops  from  South  Atlantic  states 
before  a  collision,  in  order  that  efforts  might  be  made  to 
restore  peace  by  conference ;  and  these  were  about  to  appoint 
commissioners  to  go  to  the  President,  when  adjournment 
occurred.  In  the  midst  of  such  a  situation  the  City  of 
jMorehead  incorporation  bill  was  passed  by  the  Senate; 
and  on  the  15th,  as  a  member  of  the  Committee  on  Federal 
Affairs,  Senator  Morehead  recommended  amendment  to 
the  national  constitution  on  fugitive  slaves;  and  on  the  17th 
he  made  an  extended  eloquent  appeal  for  the  Union,  in  con- 
nection with  discussion  of  a  call  for  a  State  Convention; 
and  the  bill  passed  both  houses  that  day. 

On  January  24th,  submissions  from  Virginia  and  Alabama 
having  been  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Federal  Relations, 
that  body  recommended  appoinment  of  Commissioners  to 
meet  similar  ones  from  other  states  at  Washington  on  Feb- 
ruary 4,  1861,  and  also  similar  ones  to  a  like  Southern  meet- 
ing at  Montgomery,  Alabama,  on  the  same  date.  Senator 
Morehead  was  one  of  only  nine  who  voted  against  it. 
While  they  were  discussing  it,  the  House  resolutions  on  the 
same  line,  but  more  complete,  were  received  and  discussed. 
In  these  resolutions.  Commissioners  were  named,  those  to 
Washington  being  Hons.  John  AI.  Morehead,  Daniel  M. 
Barringer,  Chief  Justice  Thomas  Ruffin,  Ex-Governor  David 
S.  Reid  and  George  Davis,  Esq.  Those  to  Alabama  were 
Ex-Governor  Swain,  M.  W.  Ransom  and  J.  L.  Bridgers. 
These  resolutions  were  concurred  in,  the  meeting  being  set 
for  February  4,  1861,  at  Washington,  with  Senator  More- 
head  as  Chairman  of  the  Washington  Commissioners. 

And  then,  on  January  31,  1861,  came  the  ghost  of  the 
Greensboro  and  Danville  road  asking  to  be  brought  to  life! 
Senator  Barringer  moved  it  as  a  substitute  for  another  bill, 
while  Senator  Bledsoe  tried  to  make  it — no  doubt  in  a 
humorous  sense — from  "The  Shops  [at  Greensboro]  to 
Leaksville."  Senator  Thomas,  once  opposed,  now  favored 
the  Danville  link.  Senator  Dobson  favored  it  because  it 
asked  no  money  from  the  State.     Then  Senator  Bledsoe  said 


DEFENDER  OF  THE  UNION  Z72, 

Senator  Morehead  had  himself  abandoned  it,  and  referred 
to  the  matter  of  1849 ;  whereupon  Governor  ]\Iorehead  said 
he  had  never  deserted  the  Danville  connection.  He  then 
paid  his  respects  to  Senator  Bledsoe  and  the  county  of  Wake, 
whom  the  Senator  said  was  opposed  to  it.  "Take  out  of  the 
county  of  Wake  the  money  which  the  State  of  North  Caro- 
lina had  thrown  into  it,  and  it  would  soon  be  the  most  mag- 
nificently insolvent  county  to  be  found  anywhere,  either  in 
or  out  of  the  State."  Whereupon  he  advocated  the  Danville 
connection  with  great  ability,  and  the  bill  passed  second 
reading  23  to  17.  On  Friday,  February  1,  1861,  Senator 
Barringer  from  committee  introduced  a  bill  for  a  Greensboro 
and  Dan  River  Railroad,  and  it  passed  first  reading.  This 
was  the  last  day  Senator  Morehead  was  present,  as  the  As- 
sembly had  given  him  the  Peace  mission  to  the  national 
capital. 

While  he  was  gone,  however,  a  more  or  less  continuous 
fight  was  on,  by  means  of  the  Milton  &  Yancyville  Junction 
Railroad  bill,  to  get  and  defeat  a  Danville  connection,  on  the 
principle  that  it  would  be  as  "sweet"  by  any  "name."  On 
February  15,  1861,  however,  the  Senate  received  from  the 
House  a  bill  to  incorporate  The  Greensboro  and  Leaksville 
Railroad;  and  it  passed  third  reading  on  the  16th,  and 
granted  a  charter. 

Also  while  he  was  away  the  Governor  Swain  commission 
to  the  Alabama  Convention  at  Montgomery,  Alabama,  re- 
turned and  reported  on  February  11,  1861,  that  on  their 
arrival  the  Convention  had  adjourned,  so  they  communicated 
with  the  Southern  Congress  and  found  that  a  decided  mi- 
nority only  were  in  favor  of  reconstruction;  that  a  "Pro- 
visional Government  of  the  Confederate  States  of  America" 
was  adopted  on  the  8th  and  that  General  Jefterson  Davis  of 
Mississippi  was  elected  President  on  the  9th,  and  that  North 
Carolina  was  invited  to  join  them.  The  Assembly  adjourned 
on  the  25th  of  February,  1861,  awaiting  a  report  from  Sena- 
tor Morehead  and  his  fellow  Peace  Commissioners  from 
the  national  capital,  who  were  having  no  such  brief  session 
as  those  to  Alabama. 


XVIII 

The  Peace  Conference 
Governor  Morehead's  Last  Efforts 

TO 

Preserve  the  Union 

'  4th  February,  1861 

Just  why  was  North  CaroHna  attempting  to  make  peace 
by  sending  Commissioners  both  to  Washington  and  Alont- 
gomery,  and  why  was  Governor  Morehead  at  the  head  of 
the  one  and  Governor  Swain  of  the  other?  Both  were 
western  men  and  both  strong  Union  men  and  not  excelled 
in  influence  by  any  other  men  in  the  state.  They  best  repre- 
sented the  commonwealth.  The  census  of  1860  shows  how 
that  commonwealth  was  composed.  Guilford  county,  Gov- 
ernor Morehead's  home,  next  to  the  county  containing 
Raleigh,  had  the  greatest  white  population  in  the  state, 
15,738,  the  county  below  her  coming  next  with  14,968  and 
the  next  nearest  being  in  the  13,000s  in  that  part  of  the  state. 
She  had  about  one-fifth  that  number  of  slaves,  namely, 
3625,  and  but  693  free  negroes.  In  total  population — both 
white  and  negro,  20,056 — Raleigh's  county  again  stood  first, 
while  Granville  county,  next  north,  in  the  Roanoke  valley, 
with  over  one-half  colored,  came  second — 23,396,  making 
Guilford  third  in  total  population.  Halifax  county,  also  on 
the  Roanoke,  with  over  two-thirds  colored  and  far  the  great- 
est number  of  free  negroes — 2450 — in  all  counties  of  the 
state,  was  fourth  in  total  population.  Granville,  with  11,085 
slaves,  was  the  greatest  slave  county  in  North  Carolina, 
although  those  other  lower  Roanoke  counties,  Edgecombe, 
Halifax,  Warren  and  Raleigh's  and  Wilmington  counties 
came  next  in  the  10,000s.  No  county  in  the  state  but  had 
slaves,  Watauga  having  the   fewest,   104.     The  total  was 

374 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE  375 

331,081  slaves,  while  the  total  free  negroes  was  so  great  as 
30,097.  This  latter  added  to  the  631,489  white  population 
made  the  free  population  661,586 — almost  exactly  twice  the 
slave  population.  On  the  other  hand,  the  negro  population 
— both  slave  and  free — were  over  half  of  the  white  or  about 
one-third  the  total  population.  Seven  counties  had  above 
1000  free  colored  people:  about  half  of  the  Pasquotank 
county  negroes  were  free,  the  greatest  proportion  where 
there  was  a  large  colored  population.  Watauga  had  82  free 
out  of  her  104  negroes ;  and  but  one  county,  Haywood,  had 
no  free  negroes,  and  but  one  other  with  so  small  a  number 
as  2 — Madison  county — all  mountain  counties.  As  Wake, 
the  capital's  county,  was  generally  looked  upon  as  some- 
what neutral,  an  almost  North  Carolina  District-of-Colum- 
bia,  in  a  sense.  Governor  Morehead,  from  the  largest  white 
inhabited  county  in  the  state  and  from  the  dominant  white 
district  of  the  commonwealth  very  properly  headed  the 
Peace  Commission  designed  to  conciliate  the  north ;  while 
Governor  Swain,  also  of  the  west,  but  of  most  excellent 
diplomatic  qualities  and  consequently  highly  regarded  by 
the  east,  was  sent  on  the  even  more  hopeless  mission  to 
Montgomery. 

This  latter  was  in  response  to  the  Alabama  Convention's 
invitation  to  all  states  below  Mason-Dixon  line  to  confer 
on  best  measures  on  February  4,  1861.  They  were  neither 
delegates  to  the  Confederate  Provisional  Congress  nor  to  the 
Alabama  Legislature.  The  Convention  had  adjourned  sine 
die,  and  no  other  delegates  seemed  to  have  thought  it  neces- 
sary to  come ;  so  on  the  third  day,  they  concluded  to  submit 
the  North  Carolina  sentiments  to  the  Congress,  which  there- 
upon invited  them  to  do  so,  but  also  invited  North  Carolina 
to  join  the  nev/  Confederate  government,  giving  them  a  copy 
of  the  Constitution  when  it  was  adopted  on  the  8th  instant. 
They  remained  until  after  President  Davis  was  chosen 
on  the  9th  and  made  their  report  on  the  11th — a  mission 
all  in  vain. 

Meanwhile,  likewise,  on  Monday,  February  4,  1861,  at 
Virginia's  invitation,  delegates  from  eleven  states — five 
south  of  the  Mason-Dixon  line  (Delaware,  Maryland,  Vir- 


Zie  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

ginia,  Kentucky  and  North  Carolina)  and  six  north  of  that 
line  (New  Hampshire,  Rhode  Island,  New  Jersey,  Penn- 
sylvania, Ohio  and  Indiana)  met  at  Willard's  Hall  in  Wash- 
ington. Virginia's  aims  were  based  upon  an  adjustment, 
along  the  lines  of  the  Crittenden  Resolution,  by  amendment 
to  the  national  constitution,  limiting  slave  territory,  but  pro- 
tecting slave  property  in  transit.  To  such  Whigs  as  Gover- 
nor jNIorehead  it  boded  no  good  that  Ex-President  Tyler 
headed  the  Virginia  delegation.  Curiously  enough  there 
were  two  Ex-Governors  Morehead  in  the  Conference, 
cousins,  too,  one  from  Kentucky,  Charles  S.,  and  the  other 
from  North  Carolina ;  and  the  former  called  the  conference 
to  order.  On  the  second  day  Governor  J.  M.  Alorehead 
was  put  on  the  Credentials  Committee,  and  witnessed  the 
man  he  had  many  times  called  a  Whig  traitor,  elevated  to 
the  presiding  officer's  chair,  Ex-President  John  Tyler.  By 
this  time  Vermont,  Connecticut  and  New  York  were  present 
and  Massachusetts  announced  as  on  the  way,  as  was  Ten- 
nessee. Iowa  also  joined,  and  New  York  had  one  delegate 
with  more  on  the  way,  and  Illinois  was  coming.  On  the 
7th  the  Conference  called  on  President  Buchanan  and  also 
appointed  a  committee  to  formulate  measures. 

Among  the  delegates  were  such  men  as  Salmon  P.  Chase, 
George  S.  Boutwell,  Thomas  Ewing,  David  Dudley  Field, 
Reverdy  Johnson,  Wm.  M.  IMeredith,  Thomas  Ruffin,  David 
Wilmot,  and  others.  Death  marred  the  first  days  in  the 
passing  of  temporary  Chairman  Wright  of  Ohio.  Other 
delegates  were  equally  well-known  to  their  generation,  but, 
in  some  cases,  not  so  well  to  succeeding  ones.  Delegates 
had  varied  powers — some  were  bound  by  Legislatures,  some 
merely  executive  appointees.  The  Virginia  invitations  had 
the  nature  of  an  ultimatum  to  the  free  states  and  the  ma- 
jority report  tended  to  even  anticipate  it;  but  the  minority 
report  favored  the  Crittenden  Kentucky  plan  of  a  Constitu- 
tional Convention  for  amendment  on  these  questions — let 
the  Convention  settle  it.  This  was  proposed  in  the  face  of 
the  fact  that  seven  states  had  seceded  and  organized  a  new 
government.  On  Monday,  the  18th  of  February,  1861,  the 
beginning  of  the  third  week,  Mr.  Boutwell  of  Massachusetts, 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE  111 

while  holding  the  general  position  that  Governor  Morehead 
of  North  Carolina  held  as  to  constitution  and  union,  plainly 
announced  the  northern  doctrine  that,  if  a  state  attempted  to 
secede,  the  whole  force  of  the  United  States  would  be 
used  to  prevent  it,  and  "we  shall  march  our  armies  to  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  or  you  will  march  yours  to  the  Great  Lakes. 
There  can  be  no  peaceful  separation."  This  was  the  turn- 
ing point  in  the  Conference  and  it  was  in  this  connection 
on  the  following  day  that  Governor  Morehead  of  North 
Carolina  first  spoke  and  as  a  peace-maker  between  those 
who  did  and  those  who  did  not  want  debate  limited. 

'T  regret  extremely,"  said  Governor  Morehead  (N.  C), 
"to  hear  talk  of  sides  in  this  Conference.  I  came  here  to  act 
for  the  Union — the  whole  Union.  I  recognize  no  sides — 
no  party.  If  any  come  here  for  a  different  purpose  I  do  not 
wish  to  act  with  them ;  they  are  wrong.  I  hope  from  my 
heart  that  we  can  all  yet  live  together  in  peace ;  but  jf  we  are 
to  do  so  we  must  act,  and  act  speedily."'  Chief  Justice 
Ruffin  expressed  similar  sentiments  with  great  feeling: 
"I  was  born  before  the  present  Constitution  was  adopted. 
May  God  grant  that  I  do  not  outlive  it.  I  cannot  address 
you  on  this  subject  without  manifesting  a  feeling  which  fills 
my  heart."  He  wanted  the  popular  voice  at  once,  for 
unless  it  helped  North  Carolina  she  would  "be  drawn  into 
that  mad  career  of  open  defiance,  which  is  now  opening  so 
widely  against  the  government." 

While  a  detailed  account  of  this  most  interesting  Con- 
ference is  not  possible  here,  some  illustrative  expressions 
will  show  its  unique  place  in  the  events  of  Governor  More- 
head's  life.  "I  regard  the  present  course  of  New  England 
as  very  unfair,"  said  Mr.  Rives  of  Virginia.  "She  is  her- 
self responsible  for  the  existence  of  slavery — she  is  our 
fiercest  opponent;  and  yet  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania, 
who  have  not  this  responsibility,  have  always  stood  by  the 
South,  and  I  believe  they  always  will."  "The  gentleman 
from  Massachusetts  may  congratulate  himself  that  there 
are  no  negroes    [slaves]    in   that   commonwealth."     "Say, 

^Proceedings,  p.   113. 


378  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

and  let  it  be  said  in  the  Constitution,  that  you  will  not  in- 
terfere with  slavery  in  the  District,  or  in  the  States,  or  in 
the  Territories.  Permit  the  free  transit  of  our  slaves  from 
one  State  to  another,  and  in  the  language  of  the  patriarch, 
'let  there  be  peace  between  you  and  me'." 

The  effort  of  Governor  Wickliffe  of  Kentucky  to  with- 
draw the  resolution  which  precipitated  this  storm,  was  pre- 
vented by  Governor  Morehead  (N.  C.)  and  made  regular 
order  for  the  next  day.  Then  David  Dudley  Field  addressed 
them,  holding  that  the  Fathers  would  not  put  slavery  guar- 
antees more  definitely  into  the  Constitution  than  they  now 
were,  nor  would  he.  "Not  to  save  the  Union?"  asked  Gov- 
ernor Morehead  (N.  C).  "No,  Sir!  No!"  was  the  reply. 
"Then  you  will  let  the  Union  slide?"  again  interjected  the 
North  Carolina  leader,  "No,  never!"  said  the  New  York 
jurist.  "I  would  let  slavery  slide  and  save  the  Union. 
Greater  things  than  this  have  been  done.  This  year  has 
seen  slavery  abolished  in  all  the  Russias."  He  then  stated 
the  position  of  such  Southern  States  as  were  not  yet  out  of 
the  Union :  "If  you  will  support  our  amendments,  we  will 
try  to  induce  the  seceded  States  to  return  to  the  Union. 
We  rather  think  we  can  induce  them  to  return ;  but  if  we 
cannot,  then  we  will  go  with  them."  He  closed  elocjuently 
with  Longfellow's  "O  Ship  of  State!" 

On  the  23rd,  after  Mr.  Logan  of  Illinois  had  said,  in 
discussion  of  an  Iowa  proposal,  "We  should  act  as  if  the 
fate  of  a  great  nation  depended  on  our  action,"  Governor 
Morehead  (N.  C.)  thought  it  time  for  him  to  speak:  "I  thank 
God  I  hear  a  voice  such  as  I  have  just  heard  from  that  sec- 
tion of  the  country!  I  have  been  a  member  of  a  recent 
Legislature  of  North  Carolina,  in  which  there  was  a  majority 
of  secessionists.  I  have  been  jeered  at  in  that  body  for  the 
opinions  I  have  expressed,  for  I  told  those  gentlemen  re- 
peatedly that  if  we  could  once  get  the  ear  of  the  North,  the 
North  would  do  us  justice.  They  pointed  me  to  the  raid  of 
John  Brown — to  the  meeting  in  Boston,  where  the  gallows 
of  John  Brown  was  carried  with  solemn  ceremonies  into 
the  Cradle  of  Liberty.  They  pointed  me  to  the  man  who 
presided  over  that  meeting,  since  elevated  to  the  high  and 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE  379 

honorable  position  of  Governor  of  Massachusetts.  Not- 
withstanding all  this,  I  have  replied  that  the  masses  of  the 
northern  people  would  deal  fairly  by  us.  I  have  told  these 
secessionists  to  their  teeth  that  Lincoln  was  properly  elected 
under  the  Constitution,  and  he  ought  to  be  inaugurated. 
Their  reply  was  'Kansas,  and  the  John  Brown  raid!' 

"Now,  I  ask  this  Conference  to  look  for  one  moment 
at  the  efifect  of  the  amendment  which  is  proposed.  It  with- 
draws all  constitutional  protection  from  us  north  of 
36°  30'.  Adopt  it,  and  what  has  Massachusetts  to  do  but 
to  import  her  foreigners  into  the  country  south,  and  take 
possession  of  it.  New  York  will  back  her,  and  we  shall  be 
swept  from  the  face  of  the  earth. 

"If  the  gentleman  from  New  York  means  to  say  that 
the  nation  can  put  its  foot  on  the  neck  of  the  States  and 
crush  them  into  submission,  let  him  go  into  Virginia  and 
join  another  John  Brown  raid.  Virginia  will  treat  him  as 
she  did  John  Brown.  No!  the  gentleman  has  not  studied 
the  motto  of  the  Union.  There  is  the  E  pluribus  as  well  as 
the  unum.  If  the  new  President  proposes  to  come  down  to 
the  South  and  conquer  us,  he  will  find  that  the  whole  temple 
shall  fall.  We  can  be  crushed,  perhaps,  but  conquered, 
never!" 

Eight  states  were  out  of  the  Union  by  this  time.  Presi- 
dent Tyler  was  hopeful  of  bringing  them  back.  Governor 
Morehead  again  spoke  on  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  week, 
the  25th,  on  the  property  status  of  slaves  internationally. 
Indeed  he  spoke  briefly  several  times  in  moulding  the  pro- 
posed constitutional  amendment,  as  he  also  did  on  the  26th. 
On  the  latter  day,  he  spoke  on  a  proposed  mode  of  freeing 
fugitive  slaves:  "We  know,"  said  he,  "from  past  experience 
what  the  abolitionists  of  the  free  states  would  do  under  such 
a  provision  as  this  in  the  Constitution.  [He  was  qualify- 
ing it  by  keeping  the  freed  negroes  in  the  state  where 
owned.]  There  will  be  an  underground  railroad  line  along 
every  principal  route  of  travel.  There  will  be  depots  all 
along  these  lines.  Canoes  will  be  furnished  to  ferry  negroes 
over  the  Potomac  and  Ohio.  John  Brown  &  Co.  will  stand 
ready  to  kill  the  master  the  very  moment  he  crosses  the 


380  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

line  in  pursuit  of  his  slave.  What  ofificer  at  the  North  will 
dare  to  arrest  the  slave  when  John  Brown  pikes  are  stacked 
up  in  every  little  village?  If  arrested,  there  will  be  organi- 
zations formed  to  rescue  him,  and  you  may  as  well  let  the 
'nigger'  go  free  at  once.  You  are  opening  up  the  greatest 
scheme  of  emancipation  ever  devised."  His  amendment 
was  agreed  to,  17  to  3.  On  the  same  day  he  opposed  an 
amendment  of  Mr.  Fields  which  practically  acknowledged 
a  right  of  secession  under  certain  conditions,  even  though 
Mr.  Field  no  doubt  considered  them  impossible  conditions. 
"I  should  regret  extremely,"  said  Governor  Morehead,  "to 
have  this  amendment  adopted,  and  to  have  the  Constitution 
made  practically  to  assert  a  right  of  secession.  I  have 
denied  that  right  always  in  my  State,  in  public  and  in 
private.  I  am  aware  that  on  this  point  I  differ  from  the 
general  sentiment  of  the  South,  and  I  hold  there  is  no  right 
of  secession,  and  on  the  part  of  the  General  Government  no 
right  of  coercion.  I  claim  that  a  State  has  no  right  to 
secede,  because  that  right  is  not  found  in  the  Constitution, 
and  the  theory  of  the  Constitution  is  against  it."  The 
amendment  was  rejected  11  to  10.  With  the  majority  re- 
port so  nearly  finished,  Ex-Governor  Reid  of  North  Carolina 
expressed  his  purpose  not  to  agree  to  them,  whereupon  Chief 
Justice  Ruffin  and  Governor  Morehead  (N.  C.)  disagreed 
with  him:  "I  came  here,"  said  the  latter,  "to  try  to  save 
the  Union.  I  have  labored  hard  to  that  end.  I  hope  and 
believe  the  report  of  the  majority,  if  adopted,  will  save  the 
Union.  I  wish  to  carry  these  propositions  before  the  people. 
I  believe  that  the  people  of  North  Carolina  and  of  the  Union 
will  adopt  them.  Give  us  an  opportunity  to  appeal  to  the 
generosity  of  the  people  of  the  whole  Union.  Certainly  no 
Southern  man  can  object  to  submitting  these  propositions  to 
the  popular  vote." 

When  the  vote  on  sections  was  taken,  seriatim,  Chief  Jus- 
tice Ruffin  and  Governor  Morehead  dissented  from  their 
State's  vote  against  Section  1.  The  vote  stood  11  States 
against  8  for,  with  Indiana  declining  to  vote  at  all — and 
nearly  every  State  having  one  or  more  dissenters.  The 
vote  was  accompanied  by  considerable  excitement,  because 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE  381 

it  looked  as  if  the  whole  program  was  to  fall;  but  a  motion 
to  reconsider  was  secured ;  and  on  the  27th  it  was  passed  by 
9  to  8,  with  North  Carolina  among  the  latter,  and  New  York 
divided  because  of  the  absence  of  Mr.  Field.  Thereupon 
the  whole  seven  sections  were  successively  adopted  with 
even  better  majorities.  In  two  other  cases  Chief  Justice 
Ruffin  and  Governor  Morehead  (N.  C.)  dissented  from  their 
State's  vote ;  and  on  but  sections  3  and  4  did  North  Caro- 
lina's vote  go  to  the  affirmative.  Twenty-one  States  were 
present  at  this  last  voting — all  states  north  of  and  including 
North  Carolina,  Tennessee  and  Missouri,  including  Kan- 
sas and  Iowa,  and  up  to  Michigan  and  Wisconsin, 
Against  Chief  Justice  Ruffin  of  Graham  and  Governor 
Morehead  of  Greensboro  in  North  Carolina's  delegation 
were  George  Davis  of  Wilmington,  Governor  Reid  of  Rock- 
ingham county,  and  D.  M.  Barringer  of  Raleigh. 

On  the  same  day,  President  Tyler  presented  the  proposed 
amendment  as  "Article  XIII"  to  Congress,  and  the  Senate 
rejected  it  promptly  by  a  vote  of  28  to  7.  It  was  too  late. 
The  oath  of  office  of  President  Lincoln  gave  him  no  alterna- 
tive but  to  preserve  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  at 
all  costs,  and  the  action  of  South  Carolina  and  similar  States 
left  but  one  course  to  pursue.  Political  power,  by  the  elec- 
tion, had  passed  from  the  South  to  the  North  for  the  first 
time,  practically.  A  large  element — a  growing  element  in 
the  North  had  been  and  still  were  ignoring  the  Consti- 
tution and  its  recognition  of  slave  property ;  and  the  ex- 
treme part  of  that  element  was  even  saying  that  that  instru- 
ment was  "a  covenant  with  hell."  These  elements  elected 
President  Lincoln,  who  was  bound  by  oath  to  preserve  that 
Constitution.  Great  elements  of  the  South  stood  where 
Lincoln  stood,  but  the  extreme  element  saw  him  repre- 
senting the  extreme  element  in  the  North  and  also 
ignored  the  Constitution.  Every  move  that  had  touched 
slave  property  was  a  violation  of  the  Constitution  as  much 
as  secession  was — a  point  that  is  liable  to  be  overlooked.  Be- 
fore an  avowed,  wide-spread  purpose  in  the  North  to  break 
slavery,  and  with  no  care  to  do  it  by  constitutional  methods, 
it  was  natural  that  an  equally  extreme  purpose  should  arise 


382  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

and  spread  widely  in  the  South  to  ignore  the  Constitution 
also.  With  two  great  elements,  North  and  South,  fanatical 
in  their  purpose  to  overturn  the  Constitution,  it  could  not 
but  result  in  civil  war  to  preserve  that  Constitution,  by  those 
who  would  follow  President  Lincoln.  By  the  grim  humor 
of  events,  the  Abolitionist  element,  who  declared  the  Con- 
stitution "a  covenant  with  hell"  and  sought  to  break  it,  now 
were  following  President  Lincoln  in  preserving  that  "cove- 
nant with  hell !"  No  wonder  the  Secessionists  could  not  do 
otherwise  than  identify  the  President  with  them  and  act 
accordingly.  It  is  true  that  when  the  Abolitionists  found 
just  what  Mr.  Lincoln's  purpose  was,  namely,  to  preserve 
the  Constitution,  without  regard  to  slavery,  and  did  so  for 
nearly  three  bloody  years,  they  were  inflamed  against  him 
for  it,  but  followed  him  because  he-  was  marching  against 
slave-holders.  Had  the  slave-holders  obeyed  the  Constitution 
he  would  have  found  his  greatest  protection  in  that  same 
"Black  Republican"  President,  but  because  he  sought  to 
break  it  by  secession,  he  forced  the  President  to  be  his 
enemy,  so  long  as  the  Constitution  was  threatened.  It  will 
be  seen,  therefore,  that  Governor  Morehead  even  yet  had 
the  same  attitude,  as  Mr.  Lincoln,  except  that,  Lincoln,  like 
Washington  and  Jackson  believed  that  the  Constitution,  like 
any  government  that  is  a  real  one,  had  the  power  of  self- 
preservation  and  coercion. 

This,  however,  leaves  untouched  the  question  of  the  con- 
flict of  moral  and  political  movements,  and  the  power  of 
new  wine  to  break  old  bottles.  This  was  a  realm  into  which 
Governor  Morehead  did  not  enter  apparently.  His  was  the 
realm  of  practical  statesmanship;  not  that  of  the  political 
or  moral  philosopher.  He  was  a  man  of  great  vision,  but 
it  was  not  in  this  field — so  there  is  no  occasion  for  this  narra- 
tive to  enter  it. 

The  great  Whig  leader  arrived  home  at  Greensboro  on 
March  2nd,  just  two  days  before  President  Lincoln's  in- 
auguration. 

"The  Peace  Congress  having  finished  their  labors,"  said 
the  Greensboro  Patriot  of  Thursday,  March  7,  1861,  "and 
having  adjourned,  Governor  Morehead  reached  home  by  the 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE  383 

Express  train  on  last  Saturday  evening.  He  found  waiting 
at  the  Station  an  anxious  crowd,  desiring  to  know  what  had 
been  done,  and  what  was  the  prospect  for  peace.  In  order 
to  impart  this  information  in  the  most  satisfactory  manner 
to  all,  Gov.  Morehead  repaired  at  once  to  the  Court  House, 
which  was  in  a  short  time  nearly  filled.  Having  been  travel- 
ling all  day,  the  Governor  declined  making  a  speech,  but 
taking  a  seat  on  the  bench  where  all  could  see  and  hear,  he 
proceeded  in  a  conversational  way  to  detail  briefly  what  had 
taken  place  in  the  Peace  Conference.  It  was  composed,  he 
said,  of  some  of  the  most  distingushed  men  of  the  nation. 
Many  of  them  quite  old  and  feeble;  and  who  had  retired 
from  public  life.  A  committee  of  one  from  each  state  was 
appointed  at  the  beginning  of  their  session  to  prepare  busi- 
ness. Hon.  Thomas  Ruffin  was  on  this  committee  from 
North  Carolina.  In  this  committee,  the  Governor  said, 
there  was  much  able  debating.  The  Governor  spoke  in  the 
highest  terms  of  Mr.  Ruffin  [Chief  Justice]  ;  that  he  exerted 
a  great,  if  not  a  greater  influence  than  any  other  member 
of  the  Conference;  that  he  did  not  see  how  they  could  have 
got  along  without  Judge  Rufiin.  That  the  Conference  was 
composed  of  a  great  many  distinguished  lawyers,  to  all  of 
whom  Mr.  Ruffin  was  known  by  reputation,  having  served 
so  long  as  Chief  Justice  of  our  Supreme  Court.  The  Gov- 
ernor said,  that  when  they  first  met,  New  York  nor  Massa- 
chusetts were  represented,  and  that  everything  went  on  quite 
harmoniously  until  the  delegates  from  those  States  took  their 
seats ;  that  as  soon  as  the  members  from  New  York  and 
Massachusetts  came,  they  commenced  throwing  fire-brands 
among  them.  New  York  had  nine  delegates,  five  of  whom 
seemed  determined  to  oppose  all  compromise,  but  that  the 
other  four  were  disposed  to  bring  about  an  adjustment. 
That  the  four  Union  delegates  dared  the  other  five  to  submit 
the  matter  to  the  people  of  New  York,  and  they  would  be 
voted  down  by  100,000  majority.  When  the  final  voting 
came  on,  the  vote  of  New  York  was  not  cast  either  way,  as 
one  of  the  no-compromise  delegates,  for  some  cause  or  other, 
was  not  present,  which  made  a  tie,  and  so  the  vote  of  the 
State  was  not  cast. 


384  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

"Rhode  Island,  said  the  Governor,  stood  by  the  South 
from  the  beginning.  So  did  New  Jersey.  The  delegates 
from  Ohio,  headed  by  Thomas  Ewing,  were  very  conserva- 
tive and  did  all  they  could  to  bring  about  an  adjustment. 
That  the  vote  of  North  Carolina  was  cast  against  the  propo- 
sitions as  passed,  but  that  Mr.  Ruffin  and  himself  voted  for 
them.  The  Governor  thinks  that  the  South  should  be  satis- 
fied with  the  plan  as  adopted,  and  that  it  is  everything  we 
had  any  reason  to  hope  for.  He  did  not  think  that  the 
present  Congress,  as  the  time  was  so  short,  and  as  so  much 
bad  feeling  had  been  gotten  up,  would  be  able  to 
carry  the  plan  through.  The  Governor  seemed  quite  san- 
guine that  time  would  bring  all  things  right,  but  that  if 
nothing  could  be  done,  that  the  border  states,  together  with 
the  border  free  states,  would  form  a  new  Constitution  for 
themselves,  and  take  possession  of  the  United  States.  That 
they  would  never  go  out  of  the  Union,  but  would  stay  in 
the  Union,  hold  to  the  capitol  and  Mount  Vernon,  and  let 
the  New  England  states  slough  off.  He  said  a  great  deal 
more,  but     .     .     .     we  will  add  no  more." 

The  Commissioners  made  their  report  and  were  dis- 
charged. On  March  5,  1861,  the  next  day  after  President 
Lincoln's  inauguration.  Governor  Morehead  wrote  Chief 
Justice  Ruffin  as  follows :  "I  was  at  Raleigh  yesterday  and 
found  our  friends  Badger  and  Moore  [B.  F.],  Ryan  and 
others  well  pleased  with  our  resolutions.  They  said  the 
secessionists  were  trying  to  make  dissatisfaction  with  the 
1st  Section — professing  not  to  be  able  to  understand  it — 
and  particularly  they  seemed  not  to  understand — according 

to  the  course  of  the  common  law.' They  all  put  the  proper 

construction  on  it — but  to  put  that  quibble  to  rest we 

came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  would  be  as  well  for  someone 
to  write  you  a  letter  on  the  subject,  and  get  your  reply  and 

publish  it. 1  drop  you  this  line,  that  you  may  have  the 

subject  under  consideration,  and  the  reply  ready  and  if  no 
application  is  made  for  an  explanation  I  would  respectfully 
suggest  that  you  prepare  such  an  article  for  publication  with 
or  without  your  name  as  you  prefer.  Our  resolutions  give 
general  satisfaction,  but  I  understand  our  colleagues  rep  re- 


THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE  385 

sent  them  as  a  rickety  affair,  and  Brother  Davis,  I  am  in- 
formed, made  a  strong  speech  against  them  at  Wilmington 

which  was  rapturously  received  by  not  unwilling  ears. 1 

am  exceedingly  anxious  to  see  the  inaugural.  I  fear  its 
effect  very  much.  Chase  is  in  the  Cabinet,  it  is  said,  if  so 
there  is  danger.  Nothing  certain  in  Raleigh  when  I  left 
last  evening,  but  it  was  said  that  Seward,  Bates,  Blair, 
Wells,  Chase,  Cameron  and  Montgomery  [Blair]  are  the 
Cabinet.  If  so,  the  South  refused  seats  in  it  I  expect; 
and  it  was  said  the  inaugural  would  demand  the  return 
of  all  property  seized,  the  collection  of   duties,   etc.,   etc. 

If  so,  I  fear  all  hope  is  gone but  let  us  keep  cool  and 

all  may  come  right  yet.  P.  S. — I  go  to  Charlotte 
by  the  2  o'clock  train  today,  where  I  may  get  mobbed, 
but  I  shall  risk  it;  and  if  I  am,  you  must  come  up 
and  share  the  Honors  with  me.  Charlotte  is  a  young 
Charleston."* 


'  The    Papers    of    Thomas    Ruffin,    Vol.    3,    p.    137.      Long    dashes    indicate 
paragraphs. 


XIX 

In 

The  Confederate  Provisional  Congress 
Richmond 

July,  1861 — February,  1862 

While  Governor  Morehead  was  still  in  Washington  on 
the  last  day  of  February,  1861,  North  Carolina  voted  on 
whether  to  call  a  Convention.  His  own  county,  Guilford, 
had  gone  2771  to  113  against  it;  and  the  three  delegates 
elected  were  all  Union  men,  one  being  the  Governor's 
brother.  No  other  county  approached  it  except  Randolph, 
the  next  south  of  it,  with  2466  to  45.  Not  counting  Davie, 
the  returns  of  which  were  not  in,  thirty-five  counties  were 
against  a  Convention  and  forty-eight  for  it,  with  a  somewhat 
similar  territory  to  that  of  the  recent  election,  but  with  some 
changes.  The  matter  was  not  settled  by  counties,  however, 
but  by  votes,  and  while  48  counties  voted  46,409  for  a  Con- 
vention, 35  counties  were  able  to  get  what  they  wanted, 
namely,  no  convention  by  46,603  votes,  some  of  which  were 
from  all  counties.  The  smallest  number  of  votes  against, 
in  any  one  county,  was  17  in  Edgecombe;  while  the  smallest 
for  it,  in  any  one  county,  was  34  in  Yadkin.  This  meant 
that,  by  the  small  margin  of  but  194,  with  Davie  not  counted, 
the  State  of  North  Carolina  saw  no  cause  to  consider 
a  danger  to  the  Union — at  that  time,  February  28,  1861. 
Those  counties,  however,  that  were  overwhelmingly  for 
action  were  Buncombe,  Cleveland,  Duplin,  Edgecombe, 
Franklin,  Gaston,  Halifax,  Mecklenburg,  Nash,  New 
Hanover,  Wayne,  Warren,  Rutherford,  Person,  Onslow, 
Lincoln,  Jones,  Jackson,  Hyde,  Granville,  and  a  few  others 
— chiefly  the  Charlotte  region  intimately  associated  with 
South  Carolina,  as  also  the  W^ilmington  region,  with  some 
of  the  Roanoke  valley. 

During  this  month  of  March,  1861,  the  Guilford  Grays 

386 


PROVISIONAL  CONFEDERATE  CONGRESS  387 

celebrated  their  first  anniversary  and  that  of  the  eighty-fifth 
of  the  Battle  of  Guilford  Court  House,  and  they  were  joined 
by  the  Orange  Guards,  the  Danville  Grays,  and  the  Rowan 
Rifle  Guards,  which  was  a  notable  affair  and  a  significant 
one,  for  these  were  from  "No  Convention"  counties.  Still 
no  one  knew  what  a  day  would  bring  forth,  and  the  seces- 
sionist elements  were  even  then  having  a  convention  at 
Goldsboro,  while  in  almost  every  county  either  Unionists 
or  Disunionists  were  holding  meetings.  The  Union  dele- 
gates elected,  in  case  a  convention  was  called,  were  so  much 
in  the  majority,  that  the  Warrenton  News  thought  that,  if 
the  vote  had  been  plainly  on  "Secession"  or  "No  Secession," 
it  would  have  been  still  more  overwhelmingly  for  the  latter. 
And  while  the  Confederation  was  grownig,  a  songster  in  the 
Fayetteville  Observer  was  carrolling  "Dixie"  with — 

"I'm  glad  I'm  not  in  de  land  ob  cotton; 
Old  times  dar,  am  all  forgotten ; 

Let  us  stay  !    Let  us  stay  in  North  Caroline ; 
In  Carolina  I  was  born, 
The  land  of  Backer,  Pine  and  Corn ; 

Let  us  stay !    Let  us  stay  in  North  Caroline — 
We'll  cling  to  North  Callina — Hooray!  Hooray! 
Old  Rip's  the  land  on  which  we'll  stand, 
To  live  and  die  like  freemen : 
Away  I  Away !  we'll  live  and  die  like  freemen, 
Away !  Away !  we'll  live  and  die  like  freemen. 

"That  glorious  spunk  is  still  alive, 
That  bore  us  out  in  seventy-five ; 

Let  us  stay!     Let  us  stay  in  North  Caroline; 
The  Cotton  boasters  still  may  shout. 
Their  mammy's  do  not  know  they  are  out. 
Let  us  stay !     Let  us  stay  in  North  Caroline — 
We'll  cling  to  North  Callina — Hooray!  Hooray! 
Old  Rip's  the  land,  &c. 

"Our  gallant  sons  will  fight  and  bleed, 
We'll  beard  'Old  Abe,'  we  won't  secede; 

Let  us  stay !    Let  us  stay  in  North  Caroline. 
The  coward  flies  when  danger's  near, 
But  call  the  roll  you'll  find  us  'here.' 

Let  us  stay !     Let  us  stay  in  North  Caroline — 
We'll  cling  to  North  Callina — Hooray  !  Hooray ! 
Old  Rip's  the  land,  &c. 


28S  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

"We'll  force  Old  Abram  to  do  right, 
By  standing  firm,  but  not  by  flight. 

Let  us  stay !     Let  us  stay  in  North  Caroline. 
But  when  the  die  is  cast — our  fate. 
Our  destiny  is  with  our  State. 

We  will  stay !     We  will  stay  in  North  Caroline — 
We'll  cling  to  North  Callina — Hooray!   Hooray! 
Old  Rip's  the  land  on  which  we'll  stand, 
To  live  and  die  like  freemen  ! 
Hooray !  Hooray !  Hooray  for  Rip  Van  Winkle ! 
Hooray!  Hooray!  Hooray  for  Rip  Van  Winkle!" 

But  the  Goldsboro  Convention  meant  business  and  began 
to  organize  a  "Southern  Rights  Party"  with  a  view  to 
another  vote  on  a  Convention.  This  was  met  by  efforts 
to  organize  a  "Union  Party,"  starting  in  Raleigh  under  the 
chairmanship  of  B.  F.  Moore,  Esq.  A  South  Carolina  paper 
said  at  this  time:  "Terrapin  like,  Virginia,  Kentucky  and 
Missouri  are  beginning  to  poke  out  their  heads  and  legs  pre- 
paratory to  crawling,  under  the  fire  laid  upon  their  backs 
by  the  Lincoln  Administration.  But  North  Carolina  and 
Tennessee,  under  a  stream  of  molten  lava  pouring  upon 
them,  would  not  even  shake  their  tails."  It  thought  they 
would  better  remain  a  barrier  between  North  and  South, 
whereupon  the  Patriot  editor  reminded  them  that  their  great 
boasting  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  states  that  wouldn't 
"shake  their  tails"  were  protecting  them!  On  April  18, 
1861,  however,  the  Greensboro  Patriot  said:  "It  is  with 
deep  regret  and  most  painful  anticipation  of  the  future, 
that  we  announce  to  our  readers  that  the  war  has  com- 
menced ;  that  the  first  gun  has  been  fired  and  that  Fort 
Sumter,  instead  of  being  evacuated,  as  should  have  been 
done,  has  been  violently  seized  upon,  and  that  the  flag  of  the 
Confederate  States,  now  floats  above  its  walls.  .  .  . 
Events  of  the  most  startling  character,  so  crowd  upon  each 
other,  that  the  mind  becomes  bewildered  and  confused,  no 
time  being  afforded  for  reflection.  But  yesterday,  all  was 
quiet,  peace  and  happiness ;  today,  terror,  excitement  and 
confusion  rules  the  hour.  The  Stars  and  Stripes,  the  Flag 
which  we  have  been  taught  to  reverence,  and  which  we  all 
so  much  love,  which  has  commanded  the  respect  of  the 


PROVISIONAL  CONFEDERATE  CONGRESS         389 

civilized  world,  and  beneath  whose  ample  folds,  we  have,  for 
three-quarters  of  a  century,  found  safety  and  protection,  has 
been  dishonored,  and  that,  too,  by  the  hands  of  those,  who 
of  all  others,  should  have  been  the  first  to  defend  it."  He 
then  shows  that  the  fact  that  seven  states  had  seceded,  and 
even  formed  a  government,  without  molestation  of  the 
United  States  had  led  them  to  believe  that  Uncle  Sam  would 
let  his  erring  Cotton  States  children  go,  and  the  Southern 
boundary  of  the  nation  would  be  the  south  lines  of  North 
Carolina  and  Tennessee.  He  plainly  expressed  the  doctrines 
of  James  Madison  that,  while  not  allowing  the  right  of 
secession,  except  as  revolution,  that  the  constitution  gave  no 
power  of  coercion.  In  the  same  issue,  however,  he  prints 
President  Lincoln's  call  for  75,000  men  "to  suppress  said 
combinations,  and  cause  the  laws  to  be  duly  executed," 
which,  as  it  is  observed,  said  nothing  about  secession,  but 
only  enforcement  of  laws.  The  Patriot,  however,  seems 
unable  to  conceive  of  either  side  actually  invading  the  other, 
as  he  had  been  unable  to  conceive  of  the  fall  of  Sumter; 
and  he  announced  his  determination  to  at  once  begin  issuing 
a  campaign  paper  to  be  called  "The  Stars  and  Stripes!"  As 
this  paper  was  looked  upon  as  one  of  the  first  two  or  three 
leading  Unionist  papers  of  the  State  and  as  generally  ex- 
pressing the  views  of  Governor  Morehead,  though  not  his 
organ,  it  may  be  viewed  as  the  expression  of  himself  and  his 
constituency.  In  the  same  issue  also  he  printed  Secretary 
of  War  Cameron's  telegraphic  call  upon  Governor  Ellis 
at  Raleigh  for  two  regiments,  and  the  latter's  very  natural 
reply  that  he  regarded  "the  levy  of  troops  made  by  the  Ad- 
ministration, for  the  purpose  of  subjugating  the  States  of 
the  South,  as  in  violation  of  the  Constitution,  and  as  a 
gross  usurpation  of  power."  "You  can  get  no  troops  from 
North  Carolina,"  he  underscored,  as  James  ]\Iadison  had 
given  him  interpretation  to  do.  Even  then  the  Editor  of  The 
Patriot  called  upon  the  people  to  be  calm,  for  "like  the 
mistletoe  on  the  oak,"  "in  a  short  time  the  mistletoe  will  be 
blown  away,"  but  "a  million  and  a  half  of  strong  Union 
men"  "in  the  north,  who  love  the  Union,"  "will  do  us 
justice."     "Wait."     Like  IMadison,  too,  he  said :    "Woe  to 


390  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the  ambition  that  would  meditate  the  destruction  of  either" 
[Constitution  or  Union].  On  April  25th,  however,  he  was 
ready  to  say:  "We  would  merely  suggest  the  idea,  that 
instead  of  calling  a  Convention  would  it  not  be  as  well,  for 
the  Legislature,  just  simply  to  declare  the  State  of  North 
Carolina  in  a  state  of  revolution ;  and  then  provide  all  the 
necessary  measures  for  carrying  on  the  war,  vigorously  co- 
operating with  our  Southern  brethren  in  resisting  every  at- 
tempt of  the  tyrant  Lincoln  to  subdue  the  South."  He  went 
still  further,  and  outlined  reconstruction  after  victory, 
namely,  that  one  condition  of  the  treaty  should  be  that 
"North  Carolina  is  a  free  and  independent  sovereign  State" 
and  then  determine  whether  she  wishes  to  reconstruct  the 
Union  or  join  the  Confederacy. 

On  April  17th  Virginia,  in  secret  action,  seceded,  and 
on  the  same  day,  Governor  Ellis  of  North  Carolina,  drew 
his  call  for  a  special  meeting  of  the  Assembly  for  May  1, 
1861 ;  but  Virginia  did  not  announce  her  action  until  April 
24th  and  Ellis'  proclamation  was  published  in  the  Patriot 
of  April  25th.  He  also  called  upon  the  militia  and  among 
those  that  responded  were  the  Guilford  Grays  and  Minute 
Men  under  Captain  W.  S.  Hill.  The  arsenal  at  Fayette- 
ville  was  captured  by  a  thousand  volunteers.  "On  Tuesday" 
[23d  April]  said  the  Patriot,  "our  streets  were  filled  with 
an  excited  crowd.  They  were  addressed  by  Mr.  J.  W. 
Thomas  of  Davidson,  Governor  Morehead,  Hon.  R.  C.  Pur- 
year,  Hon.  J.  A.  Gilmer,  Ralph  Gorrell,  Esq.,  Samuel  P. 
Hill,  J.  R.  McLean,  R.  P.  Dick,  Thomas  Settle  and  perhaps 
others.  The  speeches  of  these  gentlemen  all  breathed  the 
true  spirit  of  resistance  to  tyrants,  and  that  the  time  had 
come  for  North  Carolina  to  make  common  cause  with  her 
brethren  of  the  South  in  driving  back  the  Abolition  horde. 
North  Carolina  may  rest  assured  that  the  people  of  Guilford 
are  all  right."  The  Guilford  Grays,  under  Capt.  John  Sloan, 
were  at  Fort  Macon  on  duty.  Two  other  companies  were 
organizing;  and  the  Patriot  announced  its  abandonment 
of  its  campaign  paper — The  Stars  and  Stripes.  A  company 
of  Home  Guards,  also,  under  Capt.  Jos.  A.  Houston,  was 
organized  and  the  ladies  were  forming  organizations  to  pro- 


PROVISIONAL  CONFEDERATE  CONGRESS  391 

vide  supplies  and  hospital  appurtenances.  And  while  such 
preparations  were  making,  Edgeworth  Seminary  announce- 
ments were  appearing  as  usual,  telling  of  twenty  years  of 
successful  work  and  a  growth  to  a  faculty  of  seven  gentle- 
men and  four  ladies.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  when  the 
Guilford  Grays  started  for  Goldsboro  on  the  first  call,  both 
Senator  Gilmer  and  Judge  Dick — Whig  and  Democrat — and 
Richard  Sterling,  as  well,  said  to  them  substantially:  "Go! 
Defend  your  State !  Carry  with  you  the  Stars  and  Stripes, 
and  fight  under  that  banner!  Repel  any  armed  force  that 
puts  foot  on  North  Carolina  soil — whether  it  come  from 
South  Carolina,  Virginia  or  Yankeedom !"  And  they  went 
with  three  days'  rations,  expecting  soon  to  return.' 

The  special  session  of  the  Assembly  gathered  at  Raleigh 
on  May  1,  1861,  as  called,  and  at  once  ordered  another  vote 
on  Convention  for  May  17th,  and  as  there  was  no  doubt 
as  to  need  for  it,  it  was  to  meet  on  the  20th.  The  Gov- 
ernor was  directed  to  immediately  prepare  20,000  volunteers 
for  a  year,  and  10,000  State  troops  for  the  war,  with  a 
$5,000,000  defense  fund.  In  all  this  Ex-Governor  More- 
head  was  as  active  a  leader  on  committees,  military  and 
others,  as  he  had  been  on  internal  improvement,  railways, 
education  or  anything  else.  The  Assembly  was  completely 
unified  for  defense  and,  as  the  choice  of  fighting  Abolitionists 
or  Slaveholders,  one  or  the  other,  was  forced  upon  them 
they  were  already  a  unit  as  to  which  must  be  done.  On  the 
8th,  Governor  Morehead  secured  passage  of  a  bill  for  cre- 
ation of  a  Military  Board  of  three  to  advise  with  the 
Executive.  Great  dispatch  was  the  order  of  the  day  and 
the  session  adjourned  on  May  13,  1861,  to  June  25th. 

The  Convention  met  at  Raleigh  on  the  20th  of  May 
and  on  the  21st  the  members  signed  the  Ordinance  of  Se- 
cession and  two  days  later  ratified  the  "Constitution  of  the 
Confederate  States  of  America."  Governor  Morehead  being 
a  member  of  the  State  Senate  was  not  a  member  of  the  Con- 
vention. On  the  27th  of  May,  1861,  President  Davis  Pro- 
claimed North  Carolina  a  part  of  the  Confederacy.     Chief 

^  A.  M.  Scales  in  Greensboro  Daily  News,  20th  Sept.,  1908. 


392  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Justice  Ruffin  was  probably  the  ablest  leader  of  this  Con- 
vention and  before  it  adjourned  on  the  28th  he  aided  in  elect- 
ing among  the  eight  district  delegates  to  the  Confederate 
Congress,  his  companion  in  Peace  Conference  activities  at 
Washington,  State  Senator  John  Motley  Morehead,  who 
at  once  resigned  his  state  post,  and  prepared  to  go  to  the 
Confederate  capital. 

The  "Provisional  Congress  of  The  Confederate  States 
of  America,"  as  it  was  called  technically,  held  its  first  session 
at  its  temporary  capital,  Montgomery,  Alabama,  from  Feb- 
ruary 4  to  March  16,  1861.  The  second  session,  due  to 
the  Fort  Sumter  developments,  was  called  to  meet  there 
also  on  April  29th  and  did  not  adjourn  until  May  21,  1861 ; 
so  that  it  was  in  recess,  on  the  27th,  that  President  Davis 
proclaimed  North  Carolina's  entry  into  the  Confederacy, 
and  Governor  Morehead  was  elected  to  this  body.  Mean- 
while, during  June,  the  preparations  for  a  clash  of  arms 
about  the  national  capital,  led  to  the  third  session  of  the 
Confederate  Congress  being  called  to  meet  at  Richmond 
on  July  20,  1861,  and  the  Virginia  capital  becoming  the 
Confederate  capital. 

Therefore,  when,  on  July  20th,  the  delegates  assembled 
in  the  state  capital,  just  the  day  before  the  battle  of  Bull 
Run,  the  first  business  was  the  presentation  of  the  Virginia 
and  North  Carolina  delegates,  the  latter  of  whom  were  an- 
nounced by  Mr.  Toombs  of  Georgia  and  among  them  being 
Governor  John  Motley  Morehead  of  Greensboro.  The 
message  of  President  Davis,  to  which  Congressman  ]\Iore- 
head  listened,  drew  emphatic  attention  to  President  Lincoln's 
position  that  the  states  had  no  other  power  "than  that  re- 
served to  them  in  the  Union  by  the  Constitution,  }io  one  of 
them  having  ever  been  a  State  outside  of  the  Union."^  This 
was  on  Saturday.  The  following  day  President  Davis  wit- 
nessed the  defeat  of  the  national  forces  at  Bull  Run  and 
announced  the  results  to  the  Congress  at  Richmond.  Chief 
Justice  Ruffin  did  not  arrive  until  the  25th  and  it  was  the 
26th   before   any   record   of    Governor   Morehead   is   had, 

]  This  of  course  excepted  Texas,  which  was  a  "State,"  or,  more  properly,  a 
'nation"  wholly  independent  of  all  other  bodies. 


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CONI'EDERATE    CaPITOL,    RICHMOND 

From   a   live  ilullar   liill   of   1864 


PROVISIONAL  CONFEDERATE  CONGRESS  393 

namely,  a  nay  vote  in  opposition  to  secret  sessions,  in  which 
the  majority  of  his  delegates  joined  him,  but  without  success. 
On  August  2nd  a  similar  phenomena  occurred  in  connection 
with  features  of  a  general  embargo  act,  but  with  success 
attending  his  nay.  Likewise  on  August  7th,  on  a  vote  to 
adjourn  on  the  19th  to  meet  in  November,  he  voted  nay,  in  a 
minority  of  his  own  state,  but  in  vain;  but  on  another  vote 
on  adjournment  on  August  8th,  he  and  Mr.  Ruffin  voted 
nay,  in  minority  of  their  own  state,  but  were  successful  in 
preventing  adjournment.^ 

The  Congress  had  been  organized  by  the  aggressive 
leaders  of  the  secession  before  the  Virginia  and  North  Caro- 
lina members  had  appeared,  so  that  up  to  this  date  there  is  no 
evidence  of  their  membership  of  committees.  On  this  very 
day,  August  8,  1861,  Governor  Morehead  wrote  Chief 
Justice  Ruffin  from  Richmond :  "I  have  had  two  short 
conversations  with  the  President  on  the  subject  of  seeing 
our  troops  (for  it  seems  difficult  to  get  a  good  sitting  with 
the  President  so  as  to  have  a  consultation  with  him).  If  I 
understood  him  correctly,  he  is  now  willing  to  receive 
volunteers  for  any  period  of  time,  provided  we  will  arm  and 
equip  them — as  he  says  they  find  great  difficulty  to  do  it 
as  fast  as  they  tender  their  services.     .     .     . 

"Since  the  great  fight  and  victory  at  Manassas  I  think  the 
Government  has  come  to  the  conclusion,  that  it  is  not  indis- 
pensable to  victory,  that  the  troops  should  be  regulars — on 
the  contrary  it  may  sometimes  turn  out  that  it  is  better  they 
are  not  and  this  perhaps  happened  at  Manassas.  For  the 
opinion  prevails  with  many,  and  even  the  enemy  seemed  so 
to  have  concluded  from  the  dispatches  in  the  earlier  part  of 
the  day,  that  we,  once  or  twice,  had  fairly  lost  the  battle, 
according  to  the  usual  rules  of  regular  fighting — but  our 
green  volunteer  troops  were  not  up  to  their  regular  rules  and 
when  regulars  might  have  concluded  that  they  were  fairly 
whipped  and  therefore  ought  to  yield  the  day — the  volun- 
teers knew  nothing  about  it — and  only  concluded  when  hard 
pressed   and  driven  back  that   it  was   only   marching  and 

^  Thomas  Ruffin  of  Goldsboro  is  here  referred  to,  a  distant  relation  of  the 
Chief  Justice  it  is  said. 


394  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

counter  marching — and  constituted  nothing  more  than  the 
regular  emergencies  of  a  battle  field,  and  as  they  had  gone 
in  for  whipping  the  enemy — it  had  to  be  done.  And  it  was 
gloriously  done,  by  every  man  making  himself  a  hero  and 
fighting  with  a  valor  never  surpassed  anywhere.  Every 
hero  fought  as  if  the  Salvation  of  the  Republic  depended 
upon  the  vigor  of  his  own  right  arm,  and  he  determined  to 
know  nothing  but  victory  or  death."  After  describing  the 
confusion  on  the  battlefield,  "without  waiting  to  charge  or 
fire  by  platoons,  companies  or  regiments,"  "each  one  pitched 
into  his  man  hand  to  hand"  and  the  enemy  concluded  they 
were  fighting  "Devils  not  men"  hence  the  "unprecedented 
panic."  "Regulars  could  do  no  more."  "The  war  spirit 
possesses  the  whole  land,  and  Congress  [Confederate,  of 
course],  in  secret  session  all  the  time  it  transacts  business, 
will  respond  to  the  public  sentiment — this  is  perhaps  as  much 
as  I  ought  to  say  at  this  time."  He  says  regiments  are 
flocking  in  the  direction  of  Alexandria  and  Arlington,  inti- 
mating an  attack  on  Washington  with  artillery  that  will 
"satisfy  all  Black  Republicans  that  they  have  no  business 
south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line,  in  other  words — Yankee- 
ism  will  not  flourish  in  the  land  of  'Dixie'."  "I  regret  ex- 
ceedingly you  are  not  with  us  in  this  Congress." 

Much  time  during  August  was  given  to  financial  ques- 
tions and  on  August  10th,  Governor  Morehead  was  made 
the  North  Carolina  representative  on  the  Committee  "To 
Secure  The  Financial  And  Commercial  Independence  of 
The  Confederate  States."  On  the  surface  of  aflFairs  he 
apparently  took  but  little  initiative  either  in  preparing  bills 
or  in  any  recorded  discussons,  although  he  supported 
President  Davis  in  his  railroad  proposition  to  which  attention 
may  presently  be  turned.  He  was  absent  during  the  last 
days  of  the  session,  which  closed  on  August  31st. 

President  Davis  recalled  them  on  September  3rd,  how- 
ever, because  of  an  oversight  by  which  an  appointment  bill 
had  not  reached  him  for  signature.  There  were  few  in 
attendance  and  they  did  what  was  necessary  and  adjourned 
the  same  day.  Governor  jMorehead  was  not  present.  They 
adjourned  to  November  18,  1861. 


PROVISIONAL  CONFEDERATE  CONGRESS         395 

The  November  session  brought  a  recommendation  from 
President  Davis  of  personal  interest  to  Governor  Morehead, 
although  he  was  not  there  on  the  19th  to  hear  it — did  not 
arrive,  indeed,  until  the  20th,  so  far  as  the  record  indicates. 
This  was  President  Davis'  calling  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  Confederacy  had  but  two  through  transportation  lines 
north  and  south,  one  along  the  seaboard  and  one  in  western 
Virginia  to  New  Orleans ;  but  that  a  third  was  needed  and 
"might  be  secured  by  completing  a  link  of  about  forty  miles 
between  Danville,  in  Virginia,  and  Greensborough  in  North 
Carolina.  The  construction  of  this  comparatively  short  line 
would  give  us  a  through  route  from  north  to  south  in  the 
interior  of  the  Confederate  States,  and  give  us  access  to  a 
population  and  to  military  resources  from  which  we  are 
now  in  great  measure  debarred.  We  should  increase  greatly 
the  safety  and  capacity  of  our  means  for  transporting  men 
and  military  supplies.  If  the  construction  of  this  road 
should,  in  the  judgment  of  Congress,  as  it  is  in  mine,  be  in- 
dispensable for  the  most  successful  prosecution  of  the  war, 
the  action  of  the  government  will  not  be  restrained  by  the 
constitutional  objection  which  would  attach  to  a  work  for 
commercial  purposes,  and  attention  is  invited  to  the  practi- 
cability of  securing  its  early  completion  by  giving  the  needful 
aid  to  the  company  organized  for  its  construction." 

This  message  was  read  on  Tuesday,  and  on  the  following 
Saturday,  the  23rd,  Governor  Morehead,  who  was  still  in 
Greensboro,  and  was  to  leave  for  Richmond  the  next  day, 
wrote  Judge  Ruffin  that  he  had  received  an  offer  from  a 
well-known  South  Carolina  legislator  that  if  he  or  any 
other  reliable  man  would  take  hold  of  the  Danville  link  that 
the  Sea  Island  planters  would  furnish  the  slaves  to  do  the 
grading  in  quick  time  and  glad  to  do  it  because  of  the  safety 
of  the  slaves  and  would  make  a  very  low  figure.  The 
Governor  writes,  however,  of  these  facts,  namely:  Three 
Charters  cover  the  Danville  project — the  Coal  Fields  line 
from  the  Virginia  line  to  some  six  or  eight  miles  below 
Leaksville,  the  Brodnax  charter  from  Leaksville  to  Ger- 
manton,  and  the  Greensboro-Leaksville  charter.  "This  is 
not  right,"  says  Governor  Morehead's  letter.     "It  should  be 


396  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

one  corporation  throughout  or  at  least  there  should  be  but 
one  change  and  that  should  be  at  Danville  or  Leaksville — 
it  will  be  the  same  if  the  Danville  road  is  extended  to  Leaks- 
ville (ignoring  the  intermediate  charter)  or  the  Greensboro 
and  Leaksville  road  is  extended  to  Danville.  Now  had  we 
not  better  have  our  charter  so  modified  as  to  effect  this 
object.  The  Convention  of  both  States  are  in  session  and 
can  give  the  necessary  charter." 

He  then  argues  the  question  of  route.  Referring  to  the 
large  stream  of  travel  between  north  and  south,  he  thought 
"that  day  is  gone — I  confidently  believe  never  to  return." 
So  he  now  considers  it  solely  from  a  military  view,  suggest- 
ing the  Leaksvilile  route  because  of  the  coal  and  iron  on  Deep 
and  Dan  rivers.  He  confidently  assumes  the  permanence 
of  "Our  Southern  Republic."  He  also  considers  that  a 
road  from  Leaksville  and  Greensboro  to  Lynchburg,  Va.,  is 
a  military  necessity.  Judge  Ruffin  replies  with  sugges- 
tions, which  he  takes  up  in  a  letter  of  December  4,  1861, 
from  Richmond.*  President  Lincoln's  suggestion  of  a  mili- 
tary railroad  through  Cumberland  Gap  he  thinks  has  western 
North  Carolina  in  view.  Again  he  suggests  a  line  through 
Leaksville,  but  thinks  it  ought  to  run  as  direct  from  Greens- 
boro to  Danville  as  military  necessity  will  allow.  An  arm 
may  go  to  the  coal  and  iron  fields,  which  might  be  a  part 
of  the  Virginia-Tennessee  line.  Judge  Ruffin  made  an  ef- 
fort, but  it  was  finally  put  up  to  the  Confederate  Congress 
which  passed  it  on  February  8,  1862,  leaving  it  optional 
with  the  President  whether  to  connect  with  the  North  Caro- 
lina Central  or  not.  It  was  now  desired  that  the  North 
Carolina  Convention  pass  a  bill,  which  it  did  do  by  the 
10th.  The  optional  feature  is  the  only  outward  evidence 
of  the  old  "connection"  fight  which  was  carried  up  by  both 
sides  to  the  Confederate  Congress,  but,  as  the  result  indi- 

'  In  this  letter  he  answers  Judge  Ruffin's  desire  that  he  come  on  to  Raleigh 
and  aid  by  saying:  "I  should  be  willing  to  lend  my  aid  to  make  the  connection 
between  the  N.  C.  and  Danville  roads,  but  I  do  not  think  my  presence  in 
Raleigh  would  lend  any  aid  to  effect  the  object  My  efforts  to  effect  that  object 
have  been  so  often  thwarted  by  the  Eastern  Roads  and  the  N.  C.  Road  itself, 
that  my  presence  would  arouse  the  old  hostility  notwithstanding  the  pressing 
urgency  of  the  measure;  which  I  think  is  greatly  increased  by  reading  the 
message  of  Lincoln— recommending  a  Military  Road  for  Kentucky  through 
Cumberland  Gap.  He  evidently  has  his  eye  on  Western  N.  C"— Ruffin  Papers, 
Hamilton,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  200. 


PROVISIONAL  CONFEDERATE  CONGRESS  397 

cates,  the  "link"  was  bound  to  come  and  did  come  thus  as  a 
military  measure.  President  Davis  had  again  urged  it  on 
December  17th,  and  a  considerable  fight  had  been  made 
over  it  on  January  30,  1862,  and  was  continued  again  on 
February  6th,  and  on  the  7th  was  passed  9  to  3  (states), 
only  Alabama,  Florida  and  Georgia  voting  against  it,  and 
North  Carolina  being  divided.  It  therefore  took  the  vote 
of  the  Southern  Confederacy  to  decide  Governor  Morehead's 
great  question  of  the  Greensboro-Danville  link,  on  which 
North  Carolina  was  so  bitterly  divided,  and  President  Davis 
was  authorized  to  build  it  as  a  military  measure.  It  was 
not  done,  however,  without  a  systematic  protest,  headed  by 
Mr.  Toombs  of  Georgia,  on  Constitutional  grounds ;  but  on 
February  10,  1862,  President  Davis  announced  that  he  had 
signed  the  bill  and  that  closed  the  matter  so  far  as  the  Con- 
federate Congress  was  concerned.  So  was  it  to  be  as  far  as 
North  Carolina  was  concerned,  for  she  passed  a  like  bill 
on  the  same  day  ! 

Governor  Morehead  wrote,  on  the  day  President  Davis 
signed  the  bill  to  Judge  Rufiin  whose  letter  he  had  just 
received  containing  "the  joyous  intelligence  of  the  passage 
of  the  Railroad  Charter."  "On  the  same  day,"  writes 
the  Governor  in  reply,  "we  passed  the  bill  for  the  same 
purpose  appropriating  $1,000,000  to  be  expended  in  such  a 
way  as  the  President  may  direct,  which  is  now  a  law, 
so  the  Greensboro  and  Danville  connection  is  now  a  fixed 
fact  and  I  congratulate  you  on  it;  for  when  finished  it  will 
take  you  across  to  go  to  Dan  and  see  how  the  crop  is 
growing,  and  if  needs  be — go  home  the  same  way.  Don't 
you  think  I  may  congratulate  myself,  too? 

"JMotion  to  re-consider  was  disposed  of  today,  and  the 
law  was  approved  by  the  President,  and  the  thing  is  safe. 
I  will  see  the  President  in  a  day  or  two  and  get  his  views 
as  to  the  manner  in  which  the  Confederate  State  may  be 
connected  with  the  enterprise. 


"Our  city  is  in  gloom — the  defeat  at  Roanoke  Island 
is  a  calamity ;  the  Albemarle  and  Roanoke  are  exposed,  and  I 


398  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

should  not  be  surprised  any  day  to  hear  the  enemy  have 
Weldon. 

"They  have  the  Tennessee  River  open  to  Florence 
[Muscle  Shoals] — can  take  possession  of  the  Railroads  lead- 
ing to  Memphis,  and  can  pour  by  steamers  any  amount  of 
men  into  Florence,  nearly  the  heart  of  Alabama,  take  pos- 
session of  all  roads  to  Mobile  and  New  Orleans,  and  cut  off 
Memphis;  reach  the  Alississippi  below  there  and  go  toward 
New  Orleans,  leaving  the  defenses  above  at  Columbus,  etc., 
useless.  I  do  not  like  the  indications — and  our  nation  was 
as  one — and,  too,  the  field — we  are  in  danger.  Stirring 
times  may  be  expected  before  the  Inauguration." 

A  week  later  the  Provisional  Confederate  Congress 
ceased  to  exist,  on  the  17th,  when  it  adjourned ;  and  on  the 
18th  the  new  regular  government  with  Senate  and  House 
was  inaugurated  at  Richmond — and  Governor  Morehead 
was  in  neither  body.  His  influence  had  secured  the  Con- 
federacy the  third  and  best  trunk  line,  the  last  link  in  what 
would  hav.e  been  a  great  Piedmont  line  from  Maine  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi ;  and  it  was  to  prove  the  last  piece 
of  railroad  to  aid  President  Davis  and  the  Confederate 
executive  in  escaping  from  the  fall  of  Richmond. 


XX 

The  Closing  Years 

OF 

"The  Father  of  Modern  North  Carolina" 

1862-1866 

When   Governor,   or   Congressman,   Morehead   reached 
Greensboro  from  Richmond  late  in  February,  1862,  he  had 
finished  his  public  career,  although  he  was  no  doubt  not  yet 
aware  of  it,  and  was  in  his  sixty-sixth  year.     His  eldest 
daughter,  as  has  been  noted,  was  married ;  his  second  daugh- 
ter was  the  wife  of  Waightstill  W.  Avery;  his  third  was 
Mrs.  Col.  Peter  G.  Evans  of  the  63rd  North  Carolina,  whose 
husband's  death  was  to  occur  within  almost  a  year ;  his  first 
son,  Col.  John  Lindsay  Morehead  was  on  the  staff  of  the 
War-Governor  Vance ;  his  fourth  daughter,  since  1858,  had 
been  Mrs.  Julius  A.  Gray,  whose  husband  was  a  Greensboro 
banker,  later  to  be  a  railroad  president  like  his  father-in- 
law  ;  Governor  Morehead's  second  son.  Col,  James  Turner 
Morehead  was  Adjutant  with  Col.   Evans'   63rd  Cavalry, 
destined  to  be  desperately  wounded  at  the  same  time  his 
brother-in-law,   head   of   his    regiment,   was    killed ;   while 
the   Governor's  youngest  son  and  child,   Eugene  Lindsay 
Morehead,  was  then  nearly  ready  to  enter  the  University — 
destined  to  serve  as  a  Lieutenant,  later  in  the  war,  in  de- 
fending the  ocean  front  of  the  state  at  Wilmington  and  Fort 
Fisher.* 


1  It  should  be  noted  that  most  of  Governor  Morehead's  sons  and  also  sons- 
in-law  devoted  themselves  to  development  of  the  lines  in  which  he  had  been 
interested.  For  example  (not  to  mention  more,  and  referring  the  reader  to 
The  Morehead  Familv  of  North  Carolina  and  Virginia  by  Major  John 
Motley  Morehead  of  New  York),  his  son,  Major  James  Turner  Morehead,  was 
a  leader  in  the  political  reconstruction  of  the  state  in  the  early  '70s;  de- 
veloped manufacturing  so  much  at  Spray,  as  to  raise  it  from  a  300  village  to 
above   6000;   was  the   first   non-professional  leader   in  geological   survey   of   the 

399 


400  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

The  Governor's  great  project,  Alorehead  City,  and  his 
railroad  up  to  Newbern,  were  in  the  hands  of  the  enemy, 
who,  in  the  west,  were  carrying  out  the  program  he  pre- 
dicted. By  April,  1862,  the  Confederate  Congress  were 
restive  at  the  probable  loss  of  western  Virginia-Tennessee 
rail  outlet  to  the  South  and  the  threatening  moves  against 
the  coast  line,  and  asked  President  Davis  what  was  the 
status  of  the  Danville  "link,"  or,  as  it  was  now  called,  the 
Piedmont  Railroad,  the  title  given  it  in  its  North  Carolina 
Convention  charter.  They  became  still  more  anxious  in 
September,  when  the  great  McClellan  failure  in  Virginia 
began  to  encourage  plans  to  invade  Pennsylvania  and  her 
coal  and  iron  fields.  By  November  10,  1862,  the  Secretary 
of  War  was  able  to  announce  to  the  Governor  of  North 
Carolina  that  the  Greensboro-Danville  link  was  in  progress 
with  800  hands,  and  the  suggested  impressment  measures 
of  both  whites  and  negroes  and  mules  and  wagons  in  both 
states.  Labor  and  iron  rails  were  the  great  difficulty,  but 
Governor  Vance  impressed  the  former  and  as  Charlotte  had 
two  railroads  that  had  not  yet  reached  their  terminii,  the 
one  to  Statesville  was  stripped  of  its  rails  so  that  it  was  not 
completed  until  May,  1864.'  This  work  was  urged  on  by  the 
Federal  raids  from  Newbern  on  the  Wilmington  &  Weldon 
line  on  16th  December,  1862,  and  in  July,  1863  ;  although  the 
road  was  re-secured  and  repaired.  It  was  all  the  more 
needed  in  the  first  half  of  1863  in  the  supplies  for  the  great 
campaign  into  Pennsylvania  that  was  broken  at  Gettysburg; 
and  was  still  more  needed  in  the  gradual  retreat  to  and 
beyond  Richmond  that  was  to  close  the  conflict. 

It  was  about  five  days  after  the  defeat  at  Gettysburg 
and  the  fall  of  Vicksburg,  both  on  July  4,  1863,  that  Gover- 


state,  especially  in  mineralogy;  was  a  leader  in  creating  the  Midland  Railroad, 
purchasing  the  old  Western  and  attempting  the  Cape  Fear  and  Yadkin  Valley 
Railroad,  suffering  with  others  the  losses  caused  by  the  panic;  won  world-wide 
recognition  as  a  practical  scientist  by  his  laboratory  discovering  commercial 
carbide  and  showing  the  power  of  the  electric  arc  in  smelting  refractory  ores. 
At  his  plant  acetylene  gas  was  discovered  by  his  son;  and  it  produced  most 
of  the  chromium  of  the  world,  with  the  result  that  New  York  became  his 
headquarters  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Hickory  timber  was  marketed  through 
his  spoke  and  handle  factory,  and  he  had  a  boat  line  from  Madison  and  Leaks- 
ville    to    Danville   to    handle    his    products. 

1  The  July   7,   1864,   report  of  the   Raleigh   S:  Gaston   Railroad  says  that  it 
had  lost  half  its  ordinary  receipts  since  the  Danville  link  was  completed. 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         401 

nor  Morehead,  sixty-seven  years  old  on  that  same  day, 
wrote  his  friend  Judge  Ruffin:  "I  have  just  returned  from 
the  discharge  of  a  melancholy  but  pious  duty,  the  depositing 
of  the  body  of  my  venerable,  beloved  mother  beside  the  body 
of  my  honored  father  in  the  spot  selected  thirty-one  years 
ago  by  herself  as  her  final  resting  place.  When  last  I  saw 
her  some  two  weeks  since,  at  Major  Hobson's  in  Davie 
[county]  she  charged  me  to  see  that  she  was  buried  by 
father's  side.  She  expired  on  Monday  morning  as  calmly 
as  an  infant  sleeps,  in  her  92nd  year.  The  lamp  of  life  be- 
came extinguished  for  the  want  of  material  to  support  it." 

Just  what  had  happened  in  eastern  North  Carolina  by 
this  time?  In  the  summer  of  August,  1861,  General  Butler's 
naval  forces  took  the  forts  at  Hatteras  Inlet;  and  early  in 
1862  General  Burnside's  naval  force,  with  his  aid,  captured 
Roanoke  Island.  This  opened  up  the  way  to  attack  New- 
bern,  then  the  second  largest  town  in  the  state,  and  it  fell 
on  March  14,  1862;  while  they  occupied  Morehead  City, 
Beaufort,  Carolina  and  Newport,  using  Newbern  as  a  base. 
On  April  25th,  the  Federal  gun-boats  shelled  Fort  Macon, 
guarding  the  Morehead  City  inlet,  into  surrender.  By  this 
time  North  Carolina  had  put  about  41,000  equipped  men 
into  the  Confederate^  army,  and  on  a  new  call,  twenty- 
eight  more  regiments  were  formed.  Then  came  the  head- 
ship of  General  Lee  and  his  driving  back  of  McClellan's 
armies,  and  the  state  gave  15,000  more  men.  This  was  late 
in  June,  1862.  In  those  awful  battles,  as  Dr.  D.  H.  Hill 
says:  "every  fifth  Confederate  flag  floated  over  North  Caro- 
lina bayonets;  and  every  fifth  man  who  dropped  a  gun  in 
death  was  grieved  for  in  a  North  Carolina  home.  Nearly 
every  fourth  wounded  man  who  was  borne  off  in  a  litter 
or  who  limped  to  the  wretched  hospitals  in  the  rear  wore  a 
North  Carolina  uniform."  Fort  Fisher,  below  Wilmington, 
at  this  time,  was  aiding  the  very  successful  blockade  run- 
ning at  this  port.  Meanwhile  General  Lee  had  sent  forces 
to  threaten  Washington  again  to  counteract  attacks  on  Rich- 
mond, and  late  in  August,  1862,  the  second  battle  of 
Manassas  let  Lee's  forces  into  IMaryland,  and  the  great 
aggressive  campaign  into  Pennsylvania  was  begun  that,  as 


402  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

has  been  said,  ended  on  July  4,  1863.'  The  Federals  and 
Confederates  in  eastern  North  Carolina  during  this  time 
had  contested  for  the  line  of  the  Wilmington  &  Weldon 
road,  without  much  change.  But  early  in  1864  fierce  fight- 
ing was  renewed  under  new  leaders,  especially  about  Ply- 
mouth near  the  mouth  of  the  Roanoke  to  get  control  of  the 
Roanoke  river,  on  which  was  being  built  an  iron-clad,  the 
Albemarle,  and  Plymouth  was  captured,  the  Federals  giving 
up  Washington,  at  the  head  of  Pamlico.  General  Grant's 
new  leadership  in  Virginia,  however,  called  off  the  Confed- 
erate forces  in  east  North  Carolina  to  "bottle  up  Butler" 
between  the  James  and  Appomattox.  In  Grant's  great  con- 
centration upon  Richmond  and  the  campaign  of  Sherman 
to  the  sea.  General  Butler  was  to  prepare  the  way  in  Decem- 
ber, 1864,  by  reducing  Fort  Fisher,  as  it  was  proposed  to 
bring  Sherman  up  from  the  South  through  eastern  North 
Carolina  in  the  rear  of  Lee. 

Just  before  this  demonstration,  the  following  illuminating 
picture  of  the  sorrows  of  war  was  written  to  the  Confederate 
commander  in  eastern  North  Carolina : 

"As  I  am  not  posted  about  the  state  of  affairs  about 
Wilmington,"  writes  Governor  Morehead  to  General  Bragg 
on  November  22,  1864,  from  Greensboro,  "I  hope  I  may  be 
excused,  if  this  letter  shall  be  deemed  inopportune  upon  its 
arrival. 

"My  wounded  son.  Turner,  the  Provost  Marshal  of  this 
place,  is  to  be  married  on  6th  December.  He  is  only  a  few 
years  older  than  my  youngest  child,  Eugene  L.  Morehead, 
now  a  private  in  Capt.  Barron's  [  ?]  Heavy  Artillery  on  Bald 
Head  Island. 

"He  has  been  absent  since  March.  His  mother  is  very 
feeble,  but  insists  she  must  see  him — and  will  go  to  Wil- 


1  During  the  latter  part  of  1863  the  Confederate  currency  question  was  the 
most  discussed  subject  in  the;  Southern  press.  Governor  Morehead  took  part 
in  it  advocating  the  sharp  restriction  of  the  amount  in  circulation.  Some  edi- 
tors ridiculed  it,  whereupon  the  Greensboro  Patriot  attacked  that  editor  say- 
ing: "Governor  Morehead,  as  an  able  and  far-seeing  statesman,  is  too  well 
k-nown  by  the  people  to  require  any  words  from  us."  It  is  known  that  there 
were  people  who  wanted  him  to  dispose  of  his  Confederate  bonds  while  it  was 
possible  to  realize  on  them  but  he  refused,  saying  it  would  at  once  affect  the 
credit  of  the  bonds;  and  he  never  did.  He  took  his  medicine  with  the  rest  in 
manly  fashion. 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         403 

mington  for  that  purpose  if  it  becomes  necesssary.  The  loss 
of  two  sons-in-law  in  this  war,  one  son  shot  through  the 
head  and  an  invalid  for  life,  three  nephews  at  home  on 
crutches,  besides  some  half-dozen,  who  have  fallen  in  the 
service,  are  stubborn  facts  well  calculated  to  impress  her 
mind  with  the  fear,  that  she  may  never  see  her  youngest 
again. 

"She  requests  me  to  say,  that  if  you  think  there  is  any 
probability  of  an  attack,  shortly,  she  does  not  wish  her  son 
to  be  absent  from  his  post;  but  if  such  an  attack  is  not 
apprehended,  we  shall  be  greatly  obliged,  that  a  furlough 
be  granted  to  him  to  attend  the  marriage,  if  it  be  for  only  a 
few  days — postponing  a  more  extended  furlough  to  a  more 
convenient  season. 

"Should  you  grant  him  this  favor,  we  shall  be  much 
obliged,  if  you  will  give  the  proper  order  that  he  may  arrive 
by  3rd  Dec.  at  least,  as  the  wedding  is  some  fifty  miles 
distant.  I  make  no  other  application  except  this,  to  any 
one. 

"I  would  respectfully  suggest  that  confusion  is  becoming 
worse  confounded,  by  the  unfortunate  mode  of  doing  busi- 
ness, between  the  railroad  lines,  by  three  trans-shipments. 
I  do  not  know  that  I  can  impress  it  on  your  mind  more 
forcibly  than  by  statement  of  facts,  which  I  witnessed  on 
last  Sunday  morning  on  my  arrival  from  Goldsboro — 
through  a  night  of  heavy  rains. 

"Above,  below  and  around  the  depot  there  were  hundreds, 
if  not  thousands  of  sacks  of  salt,  lying  on  the  ground,  some 
piled  up — others  lying  promiscuously  around  as  they  were 
tumbled  out  of  the  cars — the  ditches  filled  with  them,  and 
the  rain-water  poured  up  against  these  piles  of  salt.  There 
were  various  instances  of  this  and  all  without  any  cover. 
Other  property  was  equally  exposed. 

"Through  freight  to  and  from  Danville  will  be  worth 
millions  to  the  company. 

"With  high  regard 

"Yr.  obt.  Svt. 

"J.  M.  Morehead. 


404  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

"P.  S. 

"Your  letter  was  duly  rec'd  and  Mrs.  M.  requests  me  to 
thank  you  sincerely  for  your  kind  invitation  to  her  to  visit 
Wilmington,  but  her  health  forbids  the  risk  of  the  journey, 
which  she  hopes  sometime  to  make. 

"Lest  it  might  be  infer'd  that  Government  agents  were 
negligent,  it  is  proper  to  say  the  salt  and  other  property 
referred  to  above  did  not  belong  to  the  Conf'dt,  Govt. 

"J.  M.  M.'" 

Whether  his  request  was  granted  is  not  known,  but  on 
January  12th,  next,  1865,  Commodore  Porter  reduced  Fort 
Fisher.  Thereupon,  in  March,  the  Johnston  forces,  falling 
back  before  Sherman's  army  coming  up  from  the  South,  had 
a  battle  at  Southwest  Creek.  Then  they  fell  back  to  Ben- 
tonville,  Johnston  county,  between  Goldsboro  and  Raleigh, 
and  on  the  19th  had  a  battle,  after  which  Johnston  retired 
towards  Raleigh  on  the  21st.  Meanwhile  the  great  closing 
battles  about  Richmond  were  being  fought  and  on  April 
10,  1865,  General  Johnston  heard  of  Lee's  surrender  and 
on  the  26th,  at  the  house  of  a  Mr.  Bennett,  near  Durham, 
Generals  Sherman  and  Johnston  agreed  on  terms  of  sur- 
render. 

Meanwhile  the  Richmond  and  Danville  road  was  the 
means  of  escape  by  the  Confederate  Government.  Greens- 
boro in  1865  is  pictured  rather  happily — or  unhappily,  if  the 
conditions  are  what  one  has  in  mind  rather  than  the  quality 
of  the  pictures,  one  of  which  is  by  Mrs.  (Letitia  H.) 
William  R.  Walker,  daughter  of  Governor  Morehead :  "Gen- 
eral Beauregard  and  staff  came  to  Greensboro  in  March, 
spending  several  days  at  Blandwood,  Governor  Morehead's 
mansion,  speeding  on  the  last  of  our  Confederate  troops 
to  join  Lee.  Suspense  was  ended  on  April  9,  1865,  when 
Lee  surrendered  to  Grant  at  Appomattox.  Before  leaving 
Richmond,  the  officials  had  the  wounded  and  sick  sent  on  to 
Greensboro,  where  every  available  room  was  filled,  and 
had  been  full  all  winter  with  the  sick  and  dying.  The 
women,  to  their  honor,  be  it  said,  ministered  to  them  daily 

^  Braxton  Bragg  Papers.     N.  C.  Hist   Comm. 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         405 

with  loving  care  and  sympathy.  The  Confederate  Navy  and 
the  army  stores  at  Richmond  were  also  sent,  by  the 
Manassas  Gap  Railroad,  to  Greensboro,  under  the  care  of 
Commander  Lee,  a  brother  of  General  Lee.  These  stores 
he  kindly  distributed  to  the  sick  and  returning  soldiers  until 
the  surrender  of  Johnston,  when  he  turned  over  the  lot 
to  the  soldiers  and  citizens  to  prevent  their  capture 
by  the  federal  troops. 

"Commander  Lee  was  a  charming  genial  old  man, 
whose  patient  endurance  of  army  rations  enlisted  the 
sympathy  of  my  mother,  who  begged  his  company  every 
day,  for  dinner,  while  he  was  in  the  city  'to  enjoy  lettuce 
and  onions.'  The  earth  seemed  to  yield  her  grateful  increase 
of  turnip  greens,  lettuce  and  onions.  These,  with  hot 
cornbread,  seemed  to  be  all  the  starving  and  uncomplaining 
soldiers  wanted. 

"President  and  Mrs.  Davis  remained  over  one  night  in 
Greensboro  in  their  car,  declining  the  invitation  from  my 
father,  'lest  the  Federal  troops  should  burn  the  house  that 
sheltered  him  for  one  night."  Memminger  and  his  wife 
remained  over  several  days  with  us  for  a  rest,  bringing 
with  them  Alexander  Stephens  of  Georgia,  so  pale  and 
care-worn,  but  the  price  was  on  his  head,  and  we  tearfully 
bade  him  God-speed.  Never  can  I  forget  the  farewell  scene 
when  the  brave  and  grand  Joseph  E.  Johnston  called  to  say 
farewell,  with  the  tears  running  down  his  brave  cheeks. 
Not  a  word  was  spoken,  but  silent  prayers  went  up  for  his 
preservation.  The  Salisbury  road  was  filled  with  the 
retreating  troops — wretched,  half -clad,  starving  and  very 
many  shoeless.  Eyes  wept  until  the  fountain  of  tears  was 
exhausted. 

"But  one  fine  morning,  amid  the  sounding  of  bugles  and 
trumpets  and  bands  of  music,  the  Federals  entered  Greens- 
boro fully  thirty  thousand  strong,  to  occcupy  the  town  for 
some  weeks.  Gen.  Cox  was  in  command.  He,  Burnside, 
Schofield  and  Kilpatrick,  with  their  staffs,  sent  word  to  the 

1  This  sufficiently  answers  Secretary  of  the  Confederate  Treasury  Stephen 
B.  Mallory,  who  intimates  otherwise  in  his  article  in  McClnre's  Magasine,  VoL 
XVI,  p.  107. 


406  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

Mayor  that  they  would  occupy  the  largest  house  in  town 
that  night,  and  until  their  quarters  were  established.  In 
charge  of  Major  Howlett,  they  came  to  Blandwood,  which 
already  sheltered  three  families  and  several  sick  soldiers. 
My  father  met  them  courteously  and  received  them  as  guests, 
a  fact  which  General  Cox  appreciated,  and  after  placing  his 
tent  in  the  rear  of  Judge  Dick's  house,  he  rode  up  every 
afternoon  to  consult  with  Hon.  J.  A.  Gilmer  and  my  father 
on  the  conditions  of  the  country.  He  was  a  most  courteous 
and  elegant  man,  and,  in  delicate  ways,  displayed  his  sym- 
pathy with  us;  no  triumph  of  the  conqueror  in  tone  of 
voice  and  manner;  spoke  tenderly  of  the  misfortunes  of 
war,  and  in  spite  of  ourselves,  won  our  heart's  confidence. 

"Very  soon  a  note  was  received  from  the  General  an- 
nouncing the  arrival  of  Mrs.  Cox  and  the  hope  was  ex- 
pressed that  'Mrs.  Gilmer  and  Mrs.  Walker  would  do  him 
the  honor  to  call  upon  his  wife.'  Our  superior  officers 
ordered  a  compliance  with  his  wishes,  but  what  to  wear 
was  the  perplexing  question.  An  old  silk,  dating  back  five 
years  in  style,  came  from  the  recesses  of  my  trunk,  the 
'skyscraper'  was  the  head  gear,  shoes  and  gloves  that  had 
run  the  blockade  and  been  purchased  at  enormous  figures. 
Thus  equipped  we  called  upon  the  lady  from  Cincinnati ! 
She  received  us  in  Mrs.  Dick's  parlor,  in  a  yellow  morning 
wrapper,  was  simple  in  manner,  dignified,  bordering  on 
stiffness,  in  contrast  with  the  genial  manners  of  her  husband. 
As  you  may  imagine,  the  discourse  was  on  very  general 
topics — the  skies,  the  climate,  etc.,  of  North  Carolina — never 
an  allusion  to  the  events  of  the  last  four  years ! 

"A  grand  review  of  all  the  troops  was  to  be  held  on  the 
next  Saturday,  and  a  pavilion  was  built  in  the  center  of  the 
town — the  upper  story  to  be  occupied  by  the  Federal  ladies. 
By  9  o'clock  a  four-horse  ambulance  with  out-riders  was 
sent  with  a  note  from  General  Cox  again  'begging  the  honor 
of  Mrs.  Gilmer's  and  Mrs.  Walker's  company  with  Mrs. 
Cox  to  witness  the  review.' 

"Mrs.  Gilmer  flatly  told  her  husband  that  she  refused 
to  add  one  more  spectator  to  the  pageant,  for  it  was  an  ene- 
my's bullet,  which  had  maimed  her  only  son  for  life.     Vio- 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         407 

lent,  decisive  words  and  very  ugly  ones,  too,  were  spoken 
by  the  other  lady,  but  a  peremptory  order  was  given  and 
with  bitter  tears,  accompanied  by  one  of  our  soldiers,  she 
went  to  the  pavilion,  to  be  received  so  graciously  by  Mrs. 
Cox.  Sullen,  speechless  and  vindictive,  no  eulogy  was  paid 
the  magnificent  pageant,  the  gorgeous  display  of  thousands 
of  new  uniforms,  glittering  sabers  and  bayonets,  and  all 
flushed  with  victory  and  marching  to  the  music  of  splendid 
bands. 

"These  troops  remained  several  weeks  encamped  on  the 
hills  around  the  town,  and  at  sunset  each  evening,  the  prac- 
ticing of  the  various  bands  of  music  would  again  open  the 
floodgates  of  tears.  But,  with  the  morning  sun,  the  ava- 
ricious desire  for  their  'greenbacks'  seized  the  ladies  of  the 
town;  pies,  chicken  and  fruit,  beaten  biscuit,  ice-cream 
and  cake  poured  into  the  camps.  One  company  sent  me  a 
message  that  'the  ice-cream  was  not  rich  enough — needed 
more  eggs.'  A  few  drops  of  tumeric  (often  used  for  yellow 
pickle)  covered  the  difficulty  and  gave  satisfaction. 

"The  reorganization  of  our  domestic  life  in  homes  and 
farms  came  up  for  consideration.  Wages  were  paid  to 
negroes  before  the  troops  left  the  town,  and  their  behavior 
was  respectful  and  creditable.  The  philanthropic  North 
sent  out  agents  to  purchase  lands  for  homes,  churches  and 
school-houses;  thus  Warnerville  sprang  into  existence. 
White  women  came  as  teachers,  and  a  lonely  life  they  led 
with  their  only  friends.  As  the  farms  were  well  advanced 
with  the  growing  crops  the  negroes  remained  and  received 
wages  and  gave  no  trouble.  Sorgum  was  introduced  during 
the  war,  while  coffee,  so-called,  of  parched  rye  and  sweet 
potatoes,  refreshed  the  inner  man. 

"It  was  a  sweet  and  heroic  service  during  the  war  to 
wear  home-spun  cloth,  leather  shoes  and  home-knit  stock- 
ings, but  when  all  was  over  and  patriotism  no  longer  de- 
manded this  sacrifice  of  self  and  comfort,  behold  we  had  no 
money  with  which  the  ward-robe  was  to  be  replenished,  no 
laws  to  protect  person  or  property.  Egyptian  darkness 
covered  the  land  for  months  until  the  manhood  of  the  South 


408  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

asserted   itself   and   adjusted   tlie   disjointed   condition    of 
affairs.     .     .     ." 

"This  account  of  the  feelings  and  actions  of  the  people  of 
Greensboro  and  the  troubles  they  went  through  shows  that 
it  is  no  wonder  they  shrink  from  the  unexpected,  limelight 
flash  of  publicity  turned  upon  them  by  these  innocent  Cupids, 
which,  singularly  enough,  were  drawn  by  Kenyon  Cox,  a  son 
of  General  Cox,  who  occupied  Greensboro  with  Federal 
troops.'" 

"But  it  was  on  March  19,  1865,"  wrote  Mrs.  (Rev.)  J. 
Henry  Smith  of  Greensboro,  some  years  ago,  "the  date  of 
the  battle  of  Bentonville,  N.  C,  that  the  war  in  its  stern  and 
startling  reality  came  to  our  very  doors.  It  was  one  of  the 
fiercest  of  the  war  and  the  last  great  battle  of  the  Con- 
federacy, in  which  Johnston  defeated  Sherman's  forces  and 
sent  them  retreating  through  the  streets  of  Goldsboro,  while 
he  attempted  to  join  Lee  in  Virginia. 

"On  that  memorable  night,  without  warning  or  prepa- 
ration, the  wounded  were  brought  to  Greensboro  in  such 
numbers  as  to  fill  the  churches,  court  house  and  every 
available  space  in  the  town."  Then  she  describes  the 
women's  work  with  the  sick  and  dying  and  how,  like  a 
thunder-bolt  out  of  a  clear  sky,  came  the  news  of  Lee's  sur- 
render. "The  Confederate  soldiers,"  said  she,  "were  all 
transferred  to  Edgeworth  Seminary,  and  our  occupation 
was  gone,"  although  they  were  allowed  to  visit  them.  She 
also  pays  tribute  to  General  Cox,  "a  Christian  gentleman  and 
Presbyterian  elder." 

Still  another  picturesque  account  appeared  in  the 
Greensboro  Patriot  of  March  23,  1866:  "During  these 
eventful  years,  Greensboro  was  a  central  railroad  thorough- 
fare of  great  importance  to  the  Confederacy.  Huge  trains 
of  cars  swept  through  almost  hourly,  bearing  their  great 
loads  from  the  Southern  States  and  mountain  regions  to  the 
great  consumer  and  fighter — the  Army  of  Northern  Vir- 


1  The  magazine  and  article  referred  to  was  McClure's,  in  which  Ex-Secre- 
tary of  the  Confederate  Navy,  Stephen  B.  Mallory,  had  an  artcle  on  "Last  Days 
of  the  Confederate  Government."  The  last  paragraph,  above,  is  from  an  article 
in  the  New  York  Tribune,  by  Carrie  Elizabeth  Herrell,  of  High  Point,  N.  C, 
defending  Greensboro  and  giving   Mrs.   Walker's   article   in   proof. 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         409 

ginia."     Then  he  describes  the  great  final  military  move- 
ment.    "Our  gallant  young  Governor  [Vance]  remained  at 
the  capital  until  Sherman's  advance  was  entering  the  limits 
of  the  city,  when,  mounting  his  horse,  he  slowly  rode  west- 
ward, and,  arriving  at  Greensboro,  made  it  the  temporary 
capital  of  the  State."     Beauregard   came  up  to  meet  the 
forces  of  Stoneman.     "As  April,   1865,  dawned  upon  the 
world,  Greensboro  was  no  longer  the  beautiful,  quiet,  de- 
lightful place  of  yore."     He  then  describes  the  confusion 
and  how   Stoneman   was   diverted   from   Greensboro  by   a 
telegraph  operator's  fictitious  answer  to  his  inquiries  by  tele- 
graph ;  but  how  soldier  mobs,  in  the  disorganization,  fought 
over  the  supplies,  and  a  mob  of  old  women  from  the  sur- 
rounding country  tried  it,  but  in  vain.     Then  he  tells  how 
Lee's  soldiers  began  to  drift  in  and  how  finally  "The  Confed- 
erate Government"  arrived  in  "a  leaky  old  car"  that  stood  on 
the  switch,  and  how  President  Davis  declined  several  invita- 
tions to  make  his  home  in  some  residence ;  how  there  was  to 
be  seen  on  the  streets  "D.  H.  Hill,  the  veteran  general,  with 
his  strange  face — and  Stuart  and  S.  D.  Lee  and  Cheatham 
and  Walthall,  and  Stephenson  and  Loring  and  Butler  of  the 
Cavalry,  and  Iverson,  who  captured  Stoneman  in  Georgia, 
and  Lomax  of  the  Virginia  Cavalry,  and  Beauregard  look- 
ing like  a  fox  and  the  old  'Doctor  of  Strategy'  Joe  Johnston 
and  Admiral  Semmes.     A  host  of  heroes  1"     He  then  de- 
scribes meeting  Secretary  of  War  John  C.   Breckenridge, 
whom  he  thought,  as  a  specimen  of  manhood,  "had  not  his 
superior  living."     He  tells  of  the  money  train  and  how  it  be- 
came stolen  but  partly  recovered  and  used  to  buy  forage  for 
Johnston's  men.     How  President  Davis  and  General  Breck- 
enridge on  horseback  and  the  rest  in  ambulances  left  toward 
Salisbury,  as  the  railroad  had  been  torn  up  by  Stoneman.^ 
Gen.  Johnston  signed  the  articles  of  surrender  to  Sherman  in 
Mr.  Ralph  Gorrell's  yard  in  Greensboro  under  the  ancient 
oaks.    The  Federal  commander.  General  Hartsufif  and  his 

^  In  Correspondence  of  Jonathan  Worth,  Vol.  I,  p.  381,  it  ssys  Govs. 
Graham  and  Swain,  as  Commissioners  of  Gov.  Vance,  went  to  meet  Sherman  . 
before  Raleigh  was  reached  in  order  to  get  good  treatment  for  the  capital;  but 
that  President  Davis,  then  at  Greensboro,  ordered  their  arrest,  but  they  were 
prisoners  within  the  enemy  lines  before  Davis'  order  reached  Hampton.  They 
got  back,  and  Johnston  evaded  arresting  them,  and  Davis  left  for  the  west. 


410  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

staff,  were  the  first  to  enter  Greensboro  to  parole  the  Confed- 
erates. This  interesting  sketch,  in  closing,  says :  "We  fought 
a  brave  fight — we  were  conquered — we  submit.'" 

By  December,  1865,  the  people  had  elected  Jonathan 
Worth  of  Guilford  county  Governor  against  Editor  W.  W. 
Holden  of  the  Raleigh  Standard,  who  had  been  provisional 
governor.  In  his  efforts  at  reorganization  in  the  spring 
following,  he  writes  Governor  Morehead  a  confidential  let- 
ter on  April  25,  1866:  "The  appointment  of  Directors  on 
our  [Rail]  Roads  is  my  most  important  duty  and  is  most 
embarrassing  to  me  because  of  want  of  information.  .  .  . 
I  am  sure  there  were  some  very  good  Old  Union  Democrats 
and  Whigs  who  did  not  vote  for  me.  I  think  it  would  be 
wrong  and  impolitic  to  seem  to  proscribe  them.  Tlie  ultra 
war  men,  in  view  of  their  own  and  the  State's  interests, 
had  better  remain  in  the  background  for  the  present.  I  may 
be  justified  in  appointing  a  very  few  of  them,  in  such  coun- 
ties as  Warren  and  Franklin." 

He  mentions  four  men  for  two  roads  and  adds :  "What 
say  you  to  these?"  But  for  the  Atlantic  &  North  Carolina 
from  Morehead  City  he  says :  "You  ought  to  be  one. 
Would  you  prefer  the  appointment  from  the  state  or  the 
stockholders?  I  would  like  to  have  a  full  conference  with 
you.  I  shall  take  no  action  until  June."  On  May  2nd,  he 
writes  another  correspondent  regarding  this  line's  presi- 
dency and  shows  that  the  office  hangs  between  Newbern 
and  Morehead  City  interests .  "Morehead  City  and  Gov- 
ernor Morehead  will  insist  that  we  will  sacrifice  the  interests 

of  the  State  to  party  and  Newbern,  if  we  reappoint ." 

For  Governor  Morehead  and  the  other  friends  of  this  road 
were  at  this  time  urging  consolidation  of  it  with  the  North 
Carolina  Central  Railroad.  This  latter  railroad,  at  this  time, 
about  June  1st,  had  built  in  its  own  shops  at  Greensboro 
a  handsome  engine  and  named  it  "The  Governor  Morehead" 
— "as  handsome  as  any  we  ever  saw,"  said  the  editor  of  The 


'  "During  the  war  I  was  with  Sherman,"  said  a  man  named  James  Burson, 
in  an  interview  in  a  Texas  paper  some  years  since,  "and  I  was  a  guard  in  front 
of  Governor  Morehead's  house — yes,  sir,  and  I  walked  up  and  down  in  front 
of  that  house  for  three  weeks  guarding  and  protecting  them." — From  a  clipping 
in  possession  of  Mrs.  W.  K.  Walker  of  Spray,  N.  C. 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         411 

Patriot.  A  letter  from  Josiah  Turner,  Jr.,  to  Governor 
Worth  on  June  20,  1866,  said  Governor  Morehead  would 
certainly  be  a  stock-holder  director.  On  June  19th,  Gov- 
ernor Worth  says  Governor  Morehead  and  party,  on  a 
special  train,  will  examine  the  North  Carolina  Central  to 
Goldsboro  on  the  26th,  and  go  to  Newbern  and  Beaufort 
on  the  27th,  to  be  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Atlantic  road 
at  the  latter  place  on  the  28th. 

And  now  comes,  about  two  weeks  after  this  Beaufort 
meeting,  what  is  probably  John  Motley  Morehead's  last 
public  effort.  A  bill  had  been  introduced  in  the  Senate  of 
North  Carolina  to  consolidate  the  Atlantic,  the  Central  and 
the  Western  railroads,  which  were  essentially  one,  as  it  was. 
On  July  17,  1866,  Governor  Morehead  wrote  an  appeal 
to  the  stockholders  of  the  "Central"  to  support  this  move- 
ment: Among  other  things,  he  said:  "Here  let  us  pause 
and  take  a  survey  of  what  has  been  done  in  seven  years 
toward  this  great  work.  From  Beaufort  harbor  to  Golds- 
boro the  Atlantic  and  North  Carolina  Railroad  Company 
have  built  ninety-six  miles.  From  Goldsboro  to  Charlotte 
you  (the  North  Carolina  Railroad)  have  built  two  hundred 
and  twenty-three  miles.  From  Salisbury  to  within  four 
miles  of  Morganton  the  Western  North  Carolina  Railroad 
has  built  seventy-six  miles  .  .  .  making  in  all  three 
hundred  and  ninety-five  miles,  from  which  deduct  forty- 
three  miles  from  Salisbury  to  Charlotte,  and  we  have  actu- 
ally built  this  great  line  three  hundred  and  fifty-two  miles 
in  one  continuous  line.  Think  of  it !  Seven  years !  In  the 
lifetime  of  a  State  or  nation  seven  years  is  but  as  a  moment 
in  its  existence.  In  the  great  day  of  a  nation's  improve- 
ments seven  years  would  not  be  the  sun-rise  of  that  day. 
We  have  done  this  great  work  in  the  twilight  of  our  great 
day  of  internal  improvement — a  day  which  dawned  so  beau- 
tifully upon  us,  but  which  became  enveloped  in  that  gloom 
which  shrouds  the  nation  in  mourning.  But  let  us  not 
despair.  The  day  which  danmed  so  beautifully  upon  us 
Zi'ill  yet  reach  its  meridian  splendor.  Then  let  us  be  up 
and  doing  .  .  .  and  then  the  hopes,  the  dreams  of 
the  great  and  good  Caldwell  and  Gaston  will  be  realized 


412  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

.  .  ,  You  have  the  honor  of  being  the  pioneers  in  this 
great  work  executed  in  sections.  Do  yourselves  now  the 
honor  to  consolidate  the  whole  and  complete  the  original 
design.  You,  the  most  powerful  and  most  independent  of 
the  three  corporations,  can,  with  much  grace,  propose  to 
your  sister  corporations  consolidations  upon  terms  of  jus- 
tice and  equity  manifesting  selfishness  in  naught  but  your 
name.  Yield  not  that.  The  new  consolidated  corporation 
should  be  still  'The  North  Carolina  Railroad  Company.' 
This  will  be  a  corporation  worthy  of  you,  of  your  State, 
and  of  the  great  destinies  that  await  it."  "What  this  destiny 
was,"  writes  R.  D.  W.  Connor  in  1912,  "no  man  had  fore- 
seen so  clearly  as  he.  The  traveller  of  1912  along  the  line 
of  the  North  Carolina  Railroad  sees  the  fulfillment  of 
Morehead's  dx-eams  of  1850."  Then,  the  same  writer  de- 
scribes the  wealth  of  development  of  modern  North  Caro- 
lina and  adds:  "The  foundation  on  which  all  this  pros- 
perity and  progress  rests  is  the  work  done  by  John  M. 
Morehead  or  inspired  by  him." ' 

Within  but  little  over  a  month  from  the  day  Governor 
Morehead  penned  that  letter  on  consolidation  of  the  east 
and  west  rail  lines,  namely,  on  August  27,  1866,  this  great- 
hearted constructor  of  a  commonwealth  was  dead — but,  as 
has  been  seen,  dead  only  in  body.  Taken  with  liver  trouble, 
in  which  that  organ  rapidly  ceased  to  function,  he  was  re- 
moved to  Rockbridge  Alum  Springs,  Virginia,  in  the  moun- 
tains northwest  of  Lexington.-  Here  distinguished  men 
visited  him,  amongst  them  Mr.  William  Southerlin  of  Dan- 
ville; and  they  found  his  mind  clear  and  vigorously  occu- 
pied with  his  great  plans  to  such  a  degree  that  they  were 
astonished.     "My  God,"  said  Mr.   Southerlin,  "is  it  pos- 


^  Address  on  presentation  of  a  bust  of  Governor  Morehead — one  of  four  in 
as  many  niches  in  the  rotunda  of  the  capitol  at  Raleigh,  on  December  4,  1912. 
The  bust  was  presented  by  two  grandsons  of  the  Governor,  John  Motley  More- 
head  and  J.  Lindsay  Patterson. 

^  In  a  letter  to  Chief  Justice  Thomas  Ruffin  on  Aug.  16,  1866,  he  says: 
"I  am  alive  and  that  is  all — as  yellow  as  a  pumpkin — jaundiced  from  top  to 
toe,  and  feel  as  if  I  cared  for  nothing  on  earth."  He  was  concerned  about 
the  arbitration  of  his  claims  to  the  Atlantic  line,  which  Mr.  Gray,  in  a  let- 
ter of  October  27,  1867,  says  the  Governor  said  was  about  $80,000,  a  large 
portion  of  his  estate.  By  August  22,  1866,  his  last  thoughts  were  for  his 
wife  and  news  of  this  arbitration  in  Chief  Justice  RufRn's  and  Governor  Gra- 
ham's hands,  which  was  finally  settled  favorably  to  Governor  Morehead's 
estate. — Letters   in   the   Ruffin    Papers,   Vol.    IV. 


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"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         413 

sible  he  can  be  in  a  dying  condition!  He  has  laid  out  fifty 
years  work  for  us  in  this  conversation  alone.'"  And  this 
was  in  the  midst  of  that  awful  wreck  of  the  whole  South 
by  civil  war,  which  was  yet  to  be  even  more  awful  in  that 
dark  reconstruction  period  that  reminds  one,  who  knows, 
of  some  of  the  present  day  horrors  of  parts  of  Europe; 
but  this  great  spirit's  vision  saw  through  that,  and  far  be- 
yond, this  great  modern  state  of  North  Carolina,  refusing 
to  have  his  soul's  eye  blinded  by  the  wreckage  about  him. 
He  was  like  those  valiant  Chicagoans,  who  began  clearing 
foundations  still  burning;  and  letting  their  contracts,  by 
which,  like  a  Phoenix  from  the  flames,  rose  the  great  modern 
city  whose  motto  is :  "I  Will."  In  this  sense,  he  was,  as  a 
distinguished  North  Carolina  statesman  recently  said  to  the 
writer,  "The  Father  of  Modern  North  Carolina;"  for,  after 
the  period  passed,  which  may  well  be  called  the  "dark  ages" 
of  the  state,  the  commonwealth  picked  up  the  lines  where 
Governor  Morehead  has  dropped  them  in  1861,  and  has 
ever  since  been  working  at  their  development,  the  vast 
road  development  of  the  present  Governor  Morrison  being 
but  one  part  of  it. 

But  in  those  closing  days  at  Alum  Springs,  he  discussed 
religion  with  his  minister  friends,  and  wrote  his  wife  the 
comforting  message  that  "he  trusted  in  the  Saviour,  in  whom 
she  trusted."  Then  came  a  day  when  he  was  removed  from 
the  room  that  had  a  view  of  the  mountains :  "Ah,  Doctor," 
said  he,  'T  have  looked  for  the  last  time  on  that  beautiful 
mountain."  The  end  came  on  August  27,  1866,  and  people 
recalled  his  farewell  address  to  the  North  Carolina  Railroad 
stockholders  in  Greensboro,  at  the  close  of  his  Presidency 
on  July  12,  1855 :  "Living,  I  have  spent  five  years  of  the 
best  portion  of  my  life  in  the  service  of  the  North  Carolina 
Railroad — dying,  my  sincerest  prayers  will  be  offered  up 
for  its  prosperity  and  its  success — dead,  I  wish  to  be  buried 
along  side  of  it  in  the  bosom  of  my  own  beloved  Carolina !" 
His  body  was  laid  to  rest  in  the  church  yard  of  the  First 
Presbyterian  Church,  within  sound  of  the  rumblings  of  the 

'  Mrs,  Mary  Bayard  Clarke's  Social  Reminiscences  in  In  Memoriam,  a 
booklet  on  Governor  Morehead. 


414  JOHX  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

great  traffic  of  the  vast  railway  systems  of  today/  A  monu- 
ment stands  over  his  grave;  and  it  has  been  proposed  that 
at  this  great  junction  of  modern  systems  of  transportation, 
when  the  original  North  Carolina  Railroad  was  completed 
and  the  last  spike  driven,  that  a  beautiful  new  columned 
Union  Station  shall  arise  dominated  at  its  front  by  a  dis- 
tinguishing statue  of  President  John  Motley  Morehead,  the 
whole  to  be  a  permanent  celebration  of  his  great  work.  And 
yet  a  greater  monument  already  exists  in  the  development  of 
modern  North  Carolina  itself,  to  the  inquirer  concerning 
which  one  may  say,  with  another:   "Circumspice!" 

A  town-meeting,  on  the  29th  and  30th,  mourned  their 
greatest  citizen.  The  Guilford  Bar  Association  said  great 
and  tender  things  about  him,  and  listened  to  Thomas  Settle, 
Jr.,  recall  the  chief  features  of  his  career  and  how  he  had 
so  often  heard  it  said  that  "John  ]\I.  Morehead  was  the  great- 
est man  the  State  of  North  Carolina  had  ever  produced." 
He  also  recalled  how,  in  the  presence  of  current  disaster 
of  civil  w'ar.  Governor  Morehead  had  said  to  him:  "I  was 
always  a  great  Providence  man;  I  leave  all  these  things  to 
Providence,  well  assured  that  He  \\\\\  bring  good  out  of  it 
yet" — in  which  respect  he  voiced  perfectly  the  sentiments  of 
his  father  before  him.  And  the  home  county  of  his  youth, 
Rockingham,  on  October  30th,  at  Wentworth,  and  its  Bar 
Association  on  February  26,  1867,  listened  to  a  great 
address  by  Hon.  John  Kerr,  who  recalled  how  young  More- 
head's  industry  in  Dr.  Caldwell's  school  was  so  great  it 
impaired  in  his  health  at  times  and  caused  his  father  to  keep 
him  at  home ;  and  traced  his  career  w'ith  great  ability. 
Referring  to  the  great  conflict  in  the  Senate  in  1858-9,  Mr. 
Kerr  said :  "Just  before  he  rose  to  answer  his  assailants, 
seeing  that  he  was  deeply  excited,  I  stepped  across  the 
aisle  and  whispered  thus  in  his  ear,  'Governor,  do  your  best. 
You  are  the  most  abused  man  in  North  Carolina.'  With  an 
eye  flashing  light  through  water  at  me,  he  promptly  re- 

*  The  funeral  took  place  at  his  residence,  "Blandwood,"  on  August  31,  1866, 
at  ten  o'clock.  On  November  23,  1866,  his  sons,  John  L.  Morehead  and  J. 
Turner  Morehead  and  his  son-in-law,  Julius  A.  Gray,  advertised  Edgeworth 
Seminary  for  rent;  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  on  December  24,  1868, 
John  Motley  Morehead  Caldwell,  as  principal,  announced  the  re-opening  of  the 
seminary. 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         415 

sponded,  'How  shall  I  deal  with  them,  my  friend — shall  I 
treat  them  gently,  or  shall  I  make  myself  the  Wellington  of 
the  occasion,  and  vanquish  them  completely?'  'Play  Well- 
ington,' said  I.  'I  will,'  he  replied,  with  energetic  action. 
.  .  .  And  he  did  play  Wellington,  if  ever  man  did,  on 
battle  field  or  in  parliament.  Never  was  there  a  more 
brilliant  victory  won,  than  he  achieved  that  day."  Mr.  Kerr 
told  of  how  he  worked  hard  to  aid  in  feeding  and  clothing 
the  soldiers  and  how  he  remembered  aged  fathers  and 
mothers  left  behind,  and  wives  and  Ititle  ones;  how  his 
steward  at  Leaksville  was  directed  to  take  care  of  large 
numbers.  His  kindliness  to  his  slaves  was  such  that  some 
of  them  said,  after  he  died,  that,  could  he  have  lived,  they 
would  prefer  being  his  slaves  to  being  free,  took  the  name 
Morehead  and  they  and  their  children  have  been  proud 
of  it  to  this  day.  His  losses  were  great,  because  he  took 
Confederate  money  and  bonds,  staking,  as  he  said,  all  he  had 
on  the  cause.  He  was,  said  Mr.  Kerr,  a  great  son,  brother, 
husband  and  father.  A  sister  said  she  had  never  seen  him 
give  way  to  his  temper ;  and  his  love  for  his  brother  Abra- 
ham, the  poet,  was  like  that  of  Jonathan  for  David.  As  a 
lawyer  Mr.  Kerr  said  he  was  entitled  to  be  ranked  as 
*'great;"  he  had  genius  and  talent  both  in  high  degree,  but 
it  was  as  an  advocate  that  he  shone  with  particular  splendor. 
"His  presence  was  imposing — his  voice  was  exceedingly 
pleasant  in  its  tones — his  argumentation  was  logical — his 
wit  sparkling — his  illustrations  striking — and  his  flow  of 
soul  under  the  excitement  of  his  causes,  captivating  to  all 
hearts.  He  assailed  with  great  force  his  adversaries'  posi- 
tions— and  defended  his  own  with  consummate  skill.  He 
was  always  self-possessed — always  courteous.  He  had  the 
best  control  of  his  temper  of  any  man  I  ever  knew.  It  was 
in  vain  to  attempt  to  get  the  advantage  of  him  by  exciting  his 
anger."  He  was  scholarly  in  his  knowledge  from  practical 
surveying  to  metaphysics  and  theories  of  Hooker,  Reid  and 
Dugald  Stewart,  and  belles-lettres  were  no  less  at  his  com- 
mand. 

An  exquisite  "Tribute"  to  him  appeared  in  the  Greens- 
boro Patriot  of  February  15,  1867,  from  the  pen  of  Lawyer 


416  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

William  Lafayette  Scott,  to  whom  Governor  Morehead  had 
been  a  hero  since  childhood,  when  his  favorite  pet  was 
named  "Morehead."  His  boyish  picture  of  his  hero  is 
given :  "He  was  about  two-score-and-two  years  old ;  the 
weight  of  years  had  not  stooped  his  shoulders ;  his  hair  was 
only  slightly  'besprent  with  rays  and  gleams  of  silver  light,' 
his  face  was  smooth  shaven ;  a  mild  luster  usually  lit  his  blue 
eyes,  but  in  moments  of  animation,  they  sparkled  like  the 
brightest  stars ;  his  forehead  was  not  high,  but  massive ;  his 
nose  slightly  Roman ;  his  chin  prominent ;  his  lips  com- 
pressed; not  infrequently,  when  in  deep  thought,  he  indulged 
in  a  whispering  whistle ;  and  his  dress  was  elegant,  but  never 
ostentatious.  Such  was  he  as  I  first  saw  him,  nor  can 
that  image  ever  pass  from  my  memory.  .  .  .  Never 
have  I  seen,  in  the  walks  of  life,  nor  has  my  imagination 
conceived,  a  man  so  all-gifted  as  he  was."  He  tells  of 
"halcyonian  evenings"  in  the  latter  half  of  1865  and  the  early 
half  of  '66  when  Governor  Morehead  would  come  down 
town  and  sit  with  neighbors  and  friends  in  reminiscence  or 
discussion,  narrative,  history — "a  living  book,"  the  joy  of 
young  and  old. 

His  old  University  Dialectic  Society  paid  its  tender 
tribute  on  September  21,  1866;  and  the  stockholders  of  the 
-North  Carolina  Railroad,  on  July  12,  1867,  registered  their 
testimony  as  to  his  "deliverance  of  the  state  from  commer- 
cial and  agricultural  bondage"  through  their  "great  central 
trunk  railway."  The  Piedmont  Railroad,  the  present  link 
between  Greensboro  and  Danville,  and  the  heart  of  the  great 
Southern  Railway  System,  expressed  their  gratitude  to  him 
on  September  13,  1866,  and  gave  to  the  station  nearest 
Greensboro  the  name  of  "Morehead."  Even  his  ancient 
enemy,  the  Raleigh  Standard,  sounded  his  praises  in  gener- 
ous accents. 

Then  the  dark  ages  of  reconstruction,  which,  his  eyes 
were  fortunately  prevented  from  seeing  by  his  passing  at 
the  "three-score-and-ten"  mile  post,  gradually  faded  and  a 
new  generation,  his  own  sons  and  nephews  among  them, 
picked  up  the  lines  as  they  fell  from  his  hands  in  1861 ;  and 
began  to  again  develop  that  program  "of  fifty  years,"  at 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         417 

which  Maj.  Southerhn,  a  Danville  connection  director,  had 
exclaimed.  It  is  now  half  a  dozen  years  more  than  that  half 
century,  since  he  died ;  and  "modern  North  Carolina"  is  the 
only  term  that  adequately  distinguishes  the  "Tar-Heel"  state 
of  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  from  all  periods  preceding. 
"The  traveller  along  the  line  of  the  North  Carolina  Railroad" 
[now  the  Southern  Railway]"  writes  Mr.  R.  D.  W.  Connor 
in  1912,  "sees  the  fulfillment  of  Morehead's  dreams  of  1850. 
He  finds  himself  in  one  of  the  most  productive  regions  of 
the  new  world.  He  traverses  it  from  one  end  to  the  other 
at  a  speed  of  forty  miles  an  hour,  surrounded  by  every  com- 
fort and  convenience  of  modern  travel.  He  passes  through 
a  region  bound  together  by  a  thousand  miles  of  steel  rails, 
by  telegraph  and  telephone  lines,  and  by  nearly  two  thousand 
miles  of  improved  country  roads.  He  finds  a  population  en- 
gaged not  only  in  agriculture,  but  in  manufacturing,  in  com- 
merce, in  transportation,  and  in  a  hundred  other  enterprises. 
Instead  of  a  few  old-fashioned  hand-looms  turning  out  an- 
nually less  than  $400,000  worth  of  'homemade'  articles,  he 
hears  the  hum  of  three  hundred  and  sixty  modern  factories, 
operating  two  millions  of  spindles  and  looms  by  steam,  water, 
electricity,  employing  more  than  fifty  millions  of  capital,  and 
sending  their  products  to  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth. 
His  train  passes  through  farm  lands  that,  since  Morehead 
began  his  work,  have  increased  six  times  in  value,  that  pro- 
duce annually  ten  times  as  much  cotton  and  seventy-five 
times  as  much  tobacco.  From  his  car  window  instead  of 
the  four  hundred  and  sixty-six  log  huts  that  passed  for 
school-houses  in  1850,  with  their  handful  of  pupils,  he  be- 
holds a  thousand  modern  school-houses,  alive  with  the 
energy  and  activity  of  one  hundred  thousand  school  children. 
His  train  carries  him  from  Goldsboro,  through  Raleigh, 
Durham,  Burlington,  Greensboro,  High  Point,  Lexington, 
Salisbury,  Concord,  Charlotte— villages  that  have  grown 
into  cities,  old  fields  and  cross-roads  have  become  thriving 
centers  of  industry  and  culture.  Better  than  all  else,  he 
finds  himself  among  a  people,  no  longer  characterized  by 
their  lethargy,  isolation  and  ignorance,  but  bristling  with 
energy,  alert  to  every  opportunity,  fired  with  the  spirit  of 


418  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the   modern   world,   and  with   their    faces   steadfastly   set 
toward  the  future." 

"The  foundation  on  which  all  this  prosperity  and  pro- 
gress rests," — Mr.  Connor  continues,  "is  the  work  done 
by  John  M.  Morehead  or  inspired  by  him.  No  well- 
informed  man  can  be  found  today  in  North  Carolina  who 
will  dispute  his  primacy  among  the  railroad  builders  of  the 
State.  The  North  Carolina  Railroad,  the  Atlantic  and 
North  Carolina  Railroad,  the  Western  North  Carolina  Rail- 
road, the  connecting  link  between  the  North  Carolina  and 
the  Richmond  and  Danville  railroads  from  Greensboro  to 
Danville,  all  bear  witness  of  his  supremacy  in  this  field.  In 
one  of  the  finest  passages  of  his  message  to  the  General  As- 
sembly in  1842  he  urged  the  building  of  good  couty  roads ; 
today  [1912]  there  are  five  thousand  miles  of  improved 
rural  highways  in  North  Carolina.  He  recommended  the 
building  of  a  Central  Highway  from  Morehead  City  through 
Raleigh  to  the  Tennessee  line;  today  we  have  just  witnessed 
the  completion  of  a  great  State  Highway  piercing  the  very 
heart  of  the  State  almost  along  the  very  route  he  sug- 
gested seventy  years  ago.  He  suggested  plans  for  extensive 
improvements  of  our  rivers  and  harbors  ;  today  a  'thirty- foot 
channel  to  the  sea'  has  become  the  slogan  of  our  chief  ports 
and  the  National  Government  is  spending  annually  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  dollars  in  the  improvement  of  the  Cape 
Fear,  the  Neuse,  the  Pamlico  and  other  rivers  of  eastern 
North  Carolina.  He  urged  the  construction  by  the  National 
Government  of  an  inland  waterway  for  our  coastwise  ves- 
sels through  Pamlico  Sound  to  Beaufort  harbor;  seventy 
years  have  passed  since  then ;  this  enterprise  has  become 
national  in  its  scope,  the  Federal  Government  has  assumed 
charge  of  it,  and  the  whole  nation  is  anticipating  the  com- 
pletion in  the  near  future  of  an  inland  waterway  from 
Maine  through  Pamlico  Sound  and  Beaufort  harbor  to 
Florida.  First  of  all  our  statesmen  Morehead  realized  the 
possibility  of  establishing  at  Beaufort  [Morehead  City]  a 
great  world  port ;  and  although  this  dream  has  not  been 
realized,  there  is  not  lacking  today  men  noted  throughout 
the  business  world  for  their  practical  wisdom,  inspired  by  no 


John   Motley   Morehead 
A    Bust   by    Uuckstuhl    in    1912,    in   one   of   four    niches    in    the 
Capitol    Rotunda,   Raleigh 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTFI  CAROLINA"         419 

other  purpose  than  commercial  success,  who  have  not  hesi- 
tated to  stake  large  fortunes  on  the  ultimate  realization  of 
this  dream  also.  A  twentieth  century  statesman  sent  he  fore 
his  time  into  the  world  of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  a 
distinguished  scholar  has  declared,  'would  have  heen  more 
at  home  in  North  Carolina  today  than  would  any  other  of 
our  ante-bellum  governors.  He  has  been  dead  forty  years 
[at  the  time  this  was  written],  and  they  have  been  years  of 
constant  changing  and  unceasing  development.  But  so  wide 
were  his  sympathies,  so  vital  were  his  aims,  so  far-sighted 
were  his  public  policies,  and  so  clearly  did  he  foresee  the 
larger  North  Carolina  of  schools,  railroads  and  cotton  mills, 
that  he  would  be  as  truly  a  contemporary  in  the  twentieth 
century  as  he  was  a  leader  in  the  nineteenth'.'" 

But  this  was  a  decade  ago,  when  those  railroads  in  which 
the  state  stock  was  valued  at  $7,000,000;  today  it  is  valued 
above  $15,000,000;  while  the  whole  mileage  of  the  common- 
wealth is  nearly  5000  miles.  They  have  built  up  her  greatest 
cities  in  the  Piedmont  section,  instead  of  any  great  ocean 
port,  and  these  treat  New  York  as  their  port.  "Western 
North  Carolina,"  said  Mr.  B.  Frank  Mebane,  the  great 
manufacturer  at  Spray  and  Leaksville,  "is  a  suburb  of  New 
York,  which  is  little  more  than  a  night's  ride  and  we  all 
have  offices  there."  Winston-Salem,  the  largest  city  of  the 
State,  over  48,000,  a  great  tobacco  center;  Charlotte,  until 
1920  the  largest  city,  with  above  46,000,  a  manufacturing 
center,  are  both  Piedmont  cities,  after  which  follows  Wil- 
mington, now  third  (once  first),  with  over  33,000,  still  the 
port  of  North  Carolina.  Asheville,  with  over  28,000,  the 
metropolis  of  the  "Land  of  the  Sky,"  identified  with  Pied- 
mont life,  comes  fourth.     Raleigh,  with  over  24,000,  because 


1  The  extract  is  from  a  sketch  by  Dr.  C.  Alphonso  Smith  in  Ashe's  Bio- 
graphical History  of  North  Carolina,  Vol.  2,  and  quoted  by  Professor  R.  D.  W. 
Connor  in  his  address  at  the  unveiling  of  the  bust  of  Governor  Morehead  in 
the  Capitol  rotunda  at  Raleigh  in  1912.  As  interesting  added  testimony,  in 
1921,  Col.  G.  S.  Bradshaw  of  Greensboro,  in  his  address  of  presentation  of  a 
portrait  of  Governor  Morehead  to  the  Court  House  there,  said:  "Not  a  great 
lawyer  as  Ruffin  or  Pearson — not  as  versatile  and  accomplished  as  Murphey,  not 
as  learned  as  Gaston,  not  as  brilliant  as  Badger,  not  as  profound  as  Moore,  not 
as  eloquent,  perhaps,  as  Stanly  or  Miller — not  as  polished  as  Graham,  yet 
judged  by  the  fruits  of  his  life  and  the  far-reaching  influence  of  his  achieve- 
ments he  was  greater  than  any  one  of  them  and  accomplished  more  than  all 
of  them.  No  name  is  more  securely  and  permanently  enshrined  in  the  heart 
of   North   Carolina  than  that   of    Governor   Morehead." 


420  JOHN  MOTLEY  MOREHEAD 

the  capital,  while  no  city  is  large  enough  to  be  the  metropo- 
lis, takes  on  many  of  the  features  of  the  leading  city,  and 
it  essentially  belongs  to  the  Piedmont.  Durham,  west  of 
Raleigh,  with  nearly  22,000  is  the  great  American  Tobacco 
Company  center,  in  the  same  region ;  while  Greensboro,  the 
"Gate  City,"  with  nearly  20,000  within  her  borders  and 
surrounded  by  factory  towns  galore,  typical  of  Governor 
Morehead's  theories,  is  in  the  very  heart  of  the  Piedmont ; 
and  High  Point,  the  great  furniture  center,  with  over  14,000, 
is  in  the  same  county,  and  comes  next.  Other  cities  above 
10,000  are  Salisbury,  Gastonia,  also  in  the  Piedmont;  and 
Newbern,  Rocky  Mount  and  Wilson  in  the  east.  Many  of 
these  and  others,  however,  are  not  representative  of  actual 
population  that  includes  country  factory  towns  identified 
with  them,  which  is  a  striking  feature  of  the  state  and  ever 
increasing. 

This  remarkable  factory  development  is  due  largely  to 
the  great  growth  of  hydro-electric  power  by  two  North 
Carolina  corporations,  the  Southern  and  the  Carolina,  the 
former  radiating  from  the  Catawba  falls  and  the  latter  in 
the  east.  She  stands  fifth  in  amount  of  electrical  energy 
developed  east  of  the  Mississippi.^  And  this  power  is  in  a 
state,  which,  in  a  decade,  "has  climbed,"  as  the  late  Governor 
Bickett  said  before  the  North  Carolina  Society  of  Philadel- 
phia, in  1920,  "from  the  twenty-second  to  the  fourth  state  in 
value  of  agricultural  products."  Only  Texas,  Iowa  and 
Illinois  surpass  her.  She  is  first  in  amount  of  cotton  to 
the  acre  and  value  of  tobacco  crop.  She  is  second  only  to 
Massachusetts  in  cotton  manufacture  and  second  only  to 
Michigan  in  furniture  factories.  She  is  sixth  in  amount 
paid  into  the  national  treasury,  and  the  richest,  per  capita, 
of  any  state  from  the  Potomac  to  the  Rio  Grande.  More 
automobiles  are  owned  in  North  Carolina  than  any  Southern 
state  except  Texas — illustrations  that  serve  to  indicate  what 
this  "modern"  state  is,  and  what  a  distinguished  North 
Carolina  statesman  of  today  meant  when  he  said  that  "Gov- 
ernor Morehead  may  be  called  The  Father  of  Modern  North 

'  Charlotte  is  the  largest  distributing  center  of  hydro-electric  power  in  the 
world. 


"FATHER  OF  MODERN  NORTH  CAROLINA"         421 

Carolina ;"  while  another,  Ex-Secretary  of  the  Navy  Daniels, 
has  predicted  that  a  great  port,  the  dream  of  Governor  More- 
head,  will  yet  be  realized  in  the  region  of  Cape  Lookout,  the 
entrance  to  Beaufort  harbor  and  Morehead  City.  And  even 
so  it  will  take  generations  to  realize  all  the  dreams  of  Gov- 
ernor John  Motley  Morehead  for  the  development  of  North 
Carolina. 


INDEX 


Index 


Abolition  Movement,  181 ;  (see 
Anti-Slavery  Movements)  ; 
and  Quakers,  188;  194;  311; 
313;  324;J25;  (see  Old  Line 
Whig  Convention,  Balti- 
more) ;  (see  Republican 
party,  "Black  Republican," 
"Republican  -  Abolitionist)  ; 
"Democratic  Abolitionist," 
364. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  election 
of,  and  Quakers  of  North 
Carolina,  82;    101;    102. 

Alamance  Battle,  13;  38. 

Alamance,  novel  by  Calvin  H. 
Wiley,  281. 

Albemarle,  1 ;  54. 

"American   Party,"  363. 

Anti-Slavery  Movements  (other 
than  Quaker  and  other  man- 
umission), 85-6;  (see  Abo- 
lition  Movement). 

Appomattox,  404. 

Ashe,  Senator  Wm.  S.,  295. 

Asylums,  for  Deaf,  Dumb, 
Blind  and  other  Defectives, 
253;   268. 

Atlanta,  beginnings  of,  301. 

Atlantic  &  North  Carolina  R. 
R.,  314;  320;  progress  of, 
322;  opening  celebrated,  344; 
345;  357;  366;  410;  411;  418. 

Avery,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Waight- 
still  W.,  399. 

Badger,     Secretary     of     Navy, 

219. 
Baltimore,  Lord,  colonies  of,  3. 
Banking   (see  Finance). 
Bank  of  North  America,  179. 
Bank  of   Pennsylvania,   181. 
Bank  of  the  United  States,  43 ; 

and    politics,    85;    122;    127; 

history  of,  179-180;  220;  an 

English    plan    to    accomplish 

same  ends,  223. 
Banks,  of   Newbern   and   Cape 

Fear  (Wilmington),  43;  44. 


Bar  of  North  Carolina,  ability 
of  in  1822,  79;  145;  180. 

Barringer,  D.  M.,  372. 

Bartram,  death  of,  4. 

Bath  county,  54. 

Beaufort,  port,  106;  136;  138- 
9;  and  railroad  to  Tennessee 
line,  145-6;  168;  (see  Port)  ; 
183;  187;  213;  249-50;  314; 
315-16;  (see  Sheppard's 
Point;  also  Morehead  City); 
an  editorial  letter  on,  341-2- 

.  3-4;  421. 

"Bell  and   Everett,"  367. 

Blackledge,  Thomas  W.,  73-4; 
and  his  four  natural  di- 
visions  of  the   state,   74. 

"Black  Republicans,"  2,^7;  (see 
Republican);  363;  364;  368; 
370;  381-2. 

"Blandwood,"  residence  of  Mr. 
]\Iorehead,  in  Greensboro, 
80;  221;  and  war,  404;  ct 
seq. 

Borough  representation,  153, 
ct  see].;  159. 

Boutwell,   Geo.   S.,  376. 

Bovcott,  Southern  commercial, 
364. 

Branch,  Gov.  John,  in  Consti- 
tutional convention,   152. 

Breckenridge  and  Lane,  370. 

Breckenridge  vote,  370. 

Bridgers,  Col.  L  L.,  of  Edge- 
combe, 351;  353;  372. 

Broune,  Wm.  Garl,  portrait 
painter,  362. 

Brown,  John,  raid  of,  363 ;  364. 

Bryan,  of  Carteret,  on  negro 
voting,  154. 

Buchanan,  James,  280;  281; 
338 

Bull  Run,  392;  394. 


Caldwell,  Rev.  Dr.  David,  and 
his  school,  12-13;  students, 
13;   14;  death  and  burial  of, 


425 


426 


INDEX 


14;  described  by  John  Mot- 
ley Morehead  I,  14-15-16- 
17-18;  19-20;  23 ;  _  More- 
head's  remarks  on  in  Con- 
vention, 162. 

Caldwell,  David  F.,  294;  298. 

Caldwell   Institute,   178;   236. 

Caldwell,  Dr.  Joseph,  21-22; 
theories  of,  22-23 ;  influence 
of,  on  discipline,  24;  again 
President,  27;  28;  and  his 
"Carlton  Papers,"  92-3-4; 
96;  97;  Railroad  "address" 
by,  97;  98;  100;  on  the 
Roanoke  Valley,  105;  132; 
death  of,  148;  monument  to, 
279;  323;  411. 

Caldwell  School  (David),  12- 
13-14-15-16-17-18;  compared 
with  the  University,  19-20. 

Cameron,   Duncan,  22. 

Canals,  83. 

Cape  Fear  river  valley,  183. 

Capital,  location  of,  in  North 
Carolina,  108;  political  chess 
game  with  in  1831,  108-9; 
110;  111. 

Capitol  and  Bank,  national,  31. 

Capitol,  at  Raleigh,  destruction 
of,  and  event's  political  influ- 
ence, 108;  109;  new  one  de- 
scribed, 122-123;  (see  State 
Capitol)  ;   213. 

"Carlton  Papers,"  or  "Num- 
bers," by  Dr.  Joseph  Cald- 
well, 92-3-4;  96;  97;  98;  100. 

Carolina  City,  342.  ■ 

Catholic,  Roman,  and  the  Con- 
stitution of  North  Carolina, 
159,  et  seq. 

"Central  Railroad  of  North 
Carolina"  (see  North  Caro- 
lina   Railroad). 

Chapman,  President  Robert  H., 
24-5;  26;  27. 

Charles  I,  3. 

"Charlotte,  a  young  Charles- 
ton," 385. 

Qiavis,  John,  negro  teacher, 
29;  a  voter,  165. 

Chinese  ^Museum,  at  Philadel- 
phia, 284. 

Cities  of  North  Carolina, 
papulation  of,  in  1821,  64. 

Claiborne,  Captain  Wm.,  Sec- 
retary of  State,  Va.,  2;  3. 

Clarendon  county,  54. 

Classics,  early  teeaching  of, 
15-16. 


Clay,  Henry,  and  the  Bank  of 
United  States,  220;  227;  and 
North  Carolina,  269:  280; 
281;  284;  286;  287;  314. 

"Clinton"  letters,  132-4-5-6. 

Cloberry,  an  owner  of  Kent 
Island,  3. 

Commerce,   increase  of,   172. 

Commission,  to  Peace  Confer- 
ence, 3i72;  to  Confederate 
Convention,  372;  (see  Peace 
Conference,  and  Swain,  Gov. 
D.  L.). 

Compensatory  lands,  Va.,  3-4. 

Confederate  officers,  409. 

Confederate  Provisional  Con- 
gress, 392,  et  seq.;  398. 

Connor,  R.  D.  W.,  on  Gover- 
nor Morehead,  412;  417-18- 
19. 

Constitutional  revision,  in 
North  Carolina,  27;  42;  57- 
8;  66;  Governor  Swain 
quoted,  67-8 ;  Morehead's 
speech  on,  68-9-70-1-2-3-4; 
an  extra  legal  convention, 
76;  in  court  structure, 
86  to  89;  and  Virginia,  106; 
and  census  of  1830,  106-7; 
108;  110;  111;  118;  119;  121; 
122;  128;  129;  130;  140; 
Convention  of  1835,  for,  144; 
Gov.  Swain  on,  145 ;  146 ; 
Convention  bill  passed  in 
House,  147 ;  final  passage, 
148;  characteristics  of,  148; 
vote  on,  150-1 ;  Convention 
for,  151,  et  seq.;  leaders  in, 
151;  plans  of,  151-2;  com- 
mittees of,  152;  methods  of, 
152  ;  Convention  and  borough 
members,  153;  and  the 
Convention  Act,  156;  and 
Fisher,  Morehead  and  Gas- 
ton, 158;  and  Non-Protes- 
tant, 159-60;  and  the  Ex- 
ecutive, 162-3;  motive  of, 
163 ;  amendment  provision, 
164-5 ;  free  negroes  again, 
165-6 ;  results  of,  166-7 ;  and 
Murphey,  Caldwell,  Fisher, 
Morehead,  et  al..  as  designers 
and  Gaston  and  others  as 
constructors,  168;  ratification 
and  promulgation,  169. 

"Constitution  and  Union," 
325. 

Continental  Congress,  and 
North  Carolina,  57. 


INDEX 


427 


Convention,  Constitutional  (see 
Constitution,  revision  of), 
42. 

Convention,  Greensboro,  In- 
ternal Improvement  or  Trans- 
portation, 185 ;  Raleigh,  do., 
185-187. 

Convention,  constitutional,  un- 
official, 119;  limited,  121;  ad- 
dress of,  121-2 ;  Transpor- 
tation, or  Internal  Improve- 
ment, 122-123 ;  members  of, 
123;  124;  address  of,  125; 
Transportation  Convention 
of  November,  1833,  at  Ra- 
leigh, 127;  report  of,  to  As- 
sembly, 129;  (see  Constitu- 
tion, revision  of). 

Convention,  "Old  Line  Whig," 
at  Baltimore,  325-35. 

Convention,  Whig  National, 
1848,  281;  (see  Philadelphia 
Whig  National  Convention). 

Cornwallis,  Lord,  at  Guilford 
Court  House,  13;  campaign 
of,  38-39. 

Cotton    (see    manufactures). 

Cotton  Manufacture  (see  man- 
ufactures). 

Counties,  early,  of  North  Caro- 
lina. 54-5. 

Counties,  equal  organization  of 
(see  West  vs.  East). 

Counties  vs.  Districts,  155. 

Countv  representation,  equality 
of,  57. 

"Court  of  Conference"  (see 
Supreme  Court). 

Courts,     Equity,    86-7-8-9-90- 

Courts,  of  northern  part  of  the 
state,  79. 

Cox,  General,  405-6. 

Crawford,  Presidential  candi- 
date, 80. 

Crittenden  or  Kentucky  Plan, 
376. 


Daniel,   Judge,   34. 

Daniels.  Secretary  of  Navy,  on 
Morehead   City,   421. 

Dan  river  (and  Banister),  1- 
2;  8;  poem  on  "Hills  of 
Dan."  9. 

Dan  River  Railroad  Company, 
354:  (see  Danville  link). 

Danville  "link"  or  "connec- 
tion,"   inception    of,    294-5 ; 


296;  298;  300;  317-18;  320 
347;  348;  349;  350;  354 
355;  359-60;  368;  372-3 
395-6 :  397  ;  398 ;  400,  404. 

Davie,  General,  22. 

Davis,   George,   372. 

Davis,  Gen.  Jefferson,  279-280; 
as  President  of  the  Confed- 
erate States,  373  \  392;  and 
the  Danville  link,  395-7-8; 
400;  405-6;  409. 

Deaf  and  Dumb  School,  Ra- 
leigh, 279. 

Democrats,  174  (see  Political 
Parties);  organ  of,  182; 
185;  280;  281;  308;  and  the 
North  Carolina  Central  Rail- 
road, 319;  324;  of  the  north. 
338;  363;  365;  368;  369; 
381—2 

"Dialectic"  and  "Philanthropic" 
Societies,  27. 

Disunionists    (see   Secession). 

Dix,  Miss  Dorothy,  and  North 
Carolina  politics,  and  care 
for  the  insane,  296. 

Dockerv,  Gen.  Alfred.  227;  324. 

Dorr's  "Rebellion,   255-6. 

Dortch,  Mr.,  of  Wayne,  351. 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  302;  for 
Union,  310;  visits  North 
Carolina,  369. 

Dudley,  Edward  P.,  101;  145; 
171 ;  173  ;  174 ;  inauguration 
of  as  Governor.  175 ;  char- 
acter of.  176;  182;  183;  185; 
187;  213;  217;  221. 

Durham,  320;  404. 

Dustin,  Hannah,  6. 


East  vs.  West  (see  West  vs. 
East),  58. 

Edgeworth,  Maria,  178;  300. 

Edgeworth  School  (see  Edge- 
worth   Seminary). 

Edgeworth  Seminary,  178-9 ; 
first  announcement  of  open- 
ing by  Mr.  Morehead,  196-7; 
description  of,  197;  208; 
277;  310;  reminiscences  of, 
345-6 ;  367  ;  and  the  Guilford 
Grays,  367-8;  391. 

Education,  42;  problems  of, 
and  school  system,  66;  84; 
86;  95;  128;  178;  187;  (see 
Edgeworth  Seminary);  196; 
222;  literacv,  235,  foot-note; 
246;  275-6;  277;  280-81;  314. 


428 


INDEX 


Edwards,  Weldon  N.,  369. 
Electoral     College,     of     North 

Carolina,   101. 
Ellis,  Governor,  369. 
Emancipation,        Pennsylvania 

and  Ohio  plans,  86. 
English    and    Welsh    Quakers, 

in  Guilford  county,  38;  39. 
Evans,  Col.  and  Mrs.  Peter  G., 

399. 
Evelin,  George,  3. 
Evins,      Rev.      Henry,      negro 

preacher,  29. 
Executive,     the,     in     Constitu- 
tional   Convention,    162-3-4 ; 

218:  267. 
"Experimental     Railroad,"     in 

Raleigh,    111-12;    120;    131; 

177. 

Fauquier  county,  Va.,  2. 

"Father  of  Modern  North 
Carolina,"  "The,"  399;  413; 
417-18-19-20. 

Fayetteville,  and  railroads,  183. 

Federalism,  in  University  of 
North  Carolina,  24;  25. 

Federal  Reserve  System,  180. 

Federal-National  ratio,  59. 

"Fillmore  &  Donelson,"  325; 
326. 

Fillmore  &  Graham,  nomina- 
tions of  in  Guilford  Co., 
313. 

Fillmore,  Millard,  285  :  289-90 ; 
(see   Fillmore   &   Graham). 

"Fillmore  &  Morehead,"  321. 

Finance,  in  North  Carolina.  43; 
44:  system,  84-5;  122;  128; 
175-6;  panic  of  1837,  179- 
180;  181;  185;  212;  219;  223; 
231-2-3-4;  246;  254-5;  256- 
7-8;  344. 

Fisher,  Charles,  64-5;  66;  68; 
quoted  on  finance,  84;  influ- 
ence of  report  of  on  wool, 
103 ;  and  Constitutional  Con- 
vention, 151 ;  as  President  of 
N.  C.  C.  R.  R.,  321 ;  344. 

Flodden  Field,  5. 

Franklin,  Governor,  65. 

Freehold  vote  for  State  Sen- 
ate, 293. 

Free  negroes,  58 ;  64 ;  81 ;  87 ; 
91;  107;  and  the  vote,  154, 
et  seq.:  165-6;  (see  Quakers 
and  Slave  Trade)  ;  209. 

Fremont,  John  C,  325. 

Free  Trade,  259-60. 


Gales,  Editor,  182. 

Gaston,  Hon.  William,  22;  28; 
32;  33;  sketch  of,  94-5;  110; 
124;  127-8;  and  Constitu- 
tional Convention,  153  et 
seq.:  156-7;  159;  as  a  Catho- 
lic, 160,  et  seq.;  and  free 
negroes,  165-6;  mentioned 
as  successor  to  Chief  Justice 
John  Marshall,  167;  174;  as 
Chief  Justice,  143,  foot-note; 
411. 

Gaston- Weldon  "link"  (see 
Weldon-Gaston    "link"). 

Georgia,    and    railroads,   310. 

German  settlements,  38;  56. 

Gilmer,  John  A.,  208 ;  325 ;  363 ; 
364;  365. 

Goldsboro,  and  railroad  track- 
laving,  316. 

Gorrell,  Ralph,  208. 

"Government  House,"  execu- 
tive mansion,  after  the  Capi- 
tol fire,  108;  123;   175. 

"Governor  Morehead,"  steam- 
boat, 211. 

Governorship,  of  North  Caro- 
lina, 65. 

"Gradual  emancipation"  (see 
Anti-Slavery  movements). 

Graham,  William  A.,  77;  145; 
146;  174;  176;  180-1;  and 
Governor  Morehead,  273-4; 
276;  279-80;  294-5;  and  Ja- 
pan, 313;  Whig  State  Presi- 
dential nominee,  365 ;   409. 

Graves.  Calvin.  37 ;  296-7 ;  302- 
3;  312-13;  319. 

Gray,  President  and  Mrs.  Julius 
A.,  399. 

"Great  j\iail  Route,"   183. 

Greene,  General,  campaign  of, 
38-9. 

Greene  ]\Ionument  Association, 
345. 

Greensboro,  39;  40;  schools  in, 
178;  a  poem  on,  by  Miss 
Hoye,  235 ;  as  county  seat, 
236;  High  School,  275; 
Female  College,  275 ;  closing 
war  scenes  at,  404,  et  seq. 

"Greensboro-Leaksville  bludg- 
eon," 359-60. 

Greensboro  Patriot,  39  ;  editor's 
large  plans,  178;  182. 

Greensboro  Railroad  Conven- 
tion, 1849,  302. 

Greensville  and  Roanoke  Rail- 
road, 169. 


INDEX 


429 


Guilford  Court  House,  Zl . 

Guilford  County,  37-8;  Gover- 
nor Tryon  on,  38;  and  the 
Constitutional  Convention. 
149-50;  and  Whigs,  182;  and 
Morehead  for  Governor,  183 ; 
189;   "Thunder"  of,  238. 

Guilford  Court  House  Battle, 
13;  38-9. 

Guilford  Guards,  208;  Grays, 
367;  387. 

Gulf  Stream  (see  "Lost  At- 
lantis"). 

Gwvnne,  Walter,  engineer,  308; 
311;  318;  319. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,   180. 
Hamilton,    of    Bothwellhaugh, 

"Hard  Cider  and  Log  Cabin" 
campaign,  208. 

Harding,   President,   180. 

Harpers  Ferry  (see  Brown, 
John). 

Harrison,  Gen.  W.  H.,  168; 
death  of,  220. 

Harrison  &  Tyler  campaign, 
209. 

Hatteras,  Cape  (See  "Lost  At- 
lantis"), poem  on,  52. 

Haywood,  Wm.  H.,  Jr.,  146. 

Hawks,  of  Newbern,  68. 

Helper,   Hinton  Rowan,  364. 

Henrv,  Louis  D.,  223  ;  228 ;  233 ; 
234 

"Henrv,  O."   (see  O.  Henrv). 

Henry"  VIII,    5. 

Hill,  Gen.  D.  H.,  409. 

"Hills  of  Dan,"  poem,  by  Abra- 
ham Forrest  Morehead,  9. 

History,  of  North  Carolina, 
proposed,  91. 

Holmes,  Governor,  65. 

Hooper,  Wm.,  tutor,  28. 

House  of  Commons  (Repre- 
sentatives), 64. 

Hove,  Mary  Ann,  teacher,  178; 
208. 

Impending  Crisis,  Helper's, 
364-5. 

Indiana  (see  Quakers  and  In- 
diana). 

Indians,  in  U.  S.,  106. 

Industrial  Convention,  309; 
(State  Fair,  etc.). 

Insurrections,    slave.    111. 

Internal  Improvements,  42-3 ; 
44-5-6-7-8;     75;     83;     (see 


"Carlton  Papers")  ;  98-9-100; 

Greensboro  Convention,  185 ; 

252:   (see  Railroads)  ;  299. 
Iredell,  James   I,  60. 
Iredell,  General  James  II,  86; 

94;  98-9-100. 

"Jacksonism,"  North  Carolina 
against,  80;  110;  and  "Anti- 
Jacksonism,"  127;  142-3; 
179;   180;   196. 

Jackson,  General  Andrew,  24; 
80;  81;  100;  101;  112;  179; 
180. 

James   IV,  5. 

Johnston,  Gen.,  in  North  Caro- 
lina, 404,  et  seq. 

Joyner,  Speaker  Andrew,  297. 

Judicial  districts,  or  circuits, 
32;  34. 

Judiciar}',  reorganization  of, 
Z2. 


Kecoughtan  (Hampton),  Va.,  2. 
Kent  Island,  Va.  (later  Md.),3. 
Kerr,   Hon.  John,  281. 
King  George  county,  Va.,  2. 
"Know    Nothing,"    or   "Ameri- 
can" party,  325. 

"Laird  of  Muirhead,"  ballad  by 
Scott,  4-5. 

"Land  of  Eden,"  in  North 
Carolina,  described  by  Wm. 
Byrd   of   Westover,   8-9. 

Lane,  Lunsford,  221. 

Lauchope  House,  5 ;  6. 

Lawyers,  notable,  of  North 
Carolina,  30. 

Leaksville,  Z7 ;   103;  355;  356. 

L'Ouverture,  Toussaint,  and 
Hayti,  40. 

Lee,  Commander,  405. 

Legal  Reports,  of  North  Caro- 
lina, 30. 

Lincoln,  President,  195-6;  as 
candidate,  368;  381-2;  on 
secession,  392. 

Lindsav,  Ann  Eliza,  41 ;  (see 
Morehead,  Mrs.  John  Mot- 
ley I). 

Lindsay  family,  origin  and 
members  of,  40-41. 

Literary  and  School  Fund  (see 
Education). 

"Loco  Focos,"  181. 

"Locomotive,"  93;   105. 


430 


INDEX 


"Lost  Atlantis,"  50;  cause  of 
problems  to  North  Carolina, 
51-2. 


Macon,  Nathaniel,  151,  et  seq.; 

159:  166. 
"Magnetic  Telegraph,"  in  North 

Carolina,  279;  280. 
Mangum,  Priestly  H.,  tutor,  29. 
JMangum,   Senator,  276. 
IManufactures,  cotton,  in  North 

Carolina,  102-3;   184-5;  313. 
Manumission   (see  Quakers  and 

Slavery). 
Marshall,    Chief   Justice   John, 

74. 
Martin.    Governor    Alexander, 

39;  218. 
Martinsville       (see       Guilford 

Court  House),  37. 
Mason,  John  Y.,  25;  276;  279. 
Mebane,    B.    Frank,    on    New 

York    and    North    Carolina, 

419. 
Mebane,  James,  97. 
Memphis      Railroad      Conven- 
tion, 301-2. 
Mexican  War,  277;  279;  281. 
Minority  protection,   155 ;   158. 
Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Bor- 
der, by   Scott,  ballad  from  on 

John  Muirhead  of  Lauchope 

and  Bullis,  4-5. 
"Minute  Men,"  369. 
Alitchell,  Professor  Elisha,  28. 
Mordecai,  President  of  Raleigh 

&  Gaston  R.  R.,  300. 
Morehead,    Abraham    Forrest, 

10. 
jMorehead,    Ann    Eliza    I    (see 

Morehead,  Mrs.  John  Motley 

Morehead,  Ann  Eliza  II,  177; 
220. 

Morehead,  Charles  I  (also 
Muirhead),  2;  4;  6. 

Morehead,   Charles   II,   6. 

Morehead  City,  321  (see  Shep- 
pard's  Point ;  also  Beaufort)  ; 
322;  323;  324;  338;  339-40; 
progress  of,  340-41 ;  an  edi- 
torial letter  on,  341-2-3-4; 
345;  349;  359;  description  of, 
360-1-2;  400;  410;  418;  Sec'y 
Daniels  on,  421. 

Morehead,  Corinna,  80. 

Morehead,  David  (see  Muir- 
head, David). 


Morehead,  Emma  Victoria, 
177;  220. 

Morehead,  Eugene  Lindsay, 
282;  399;  402. 

Morehead  family  of  Va.,  4. 

Morehead,  Gov.  James  Turner, 
209. 

Morehead,  James  Turner  I,  10; 
19;  29;  37;  104;  174;  187. 

Morehead,  James  Turner  II, 
209;  221;  Major,  career  of, 
399-400. 

Morehead,  John   I.  2;   4. 

Morehead,  John  II,  2;  birth 
and  marriage  of,  6;  charac- 
teristics, 7-8;  his  and  his 
wife's  ideas  on  education  of 
their  children,  10;  cause  of 
failure  of,   103. 

Morehead,  Mrs.  John  II  (Mot- 
ley Obedience),  6;  remark- 
able experiences  of,  in  the 
Revolution,  7;  home  of,  8; 
14:  death  of,  401. 

Morehead,  John  Lindsay,  178; 
220;   Col.,  399. 

Morehead.  John  Motley  I,  2; 
birth  of,  4;  8;  9;  brothers 
and  sisters  of,  10;  education, 
plans  for,  10;  under  Dr. 
David  Caldwell,  12-13-14 ; 
Caldwell  described  by,  in  let- 
ter bv,  14-15 ;  his  Greek  and 
Latin, 15-16-17-18-19;  enter- 
ing the  Universit}',  19-20; 
under  Dr.  Joseph  Caldwell, 
21-2 ;  influence  on,  23 ;  fel- 
low-students of,  24;  in  the 
Dialectic  Society,  25 ;  course 
of,  in  student  difficulties,  26; 
graduation,  28;  tutor,  29;  to 
study  law  under  Senator 
Murphey,  29 ;  31 ;  settles  in 
practice  at  Wentworth,  35 ; 
and  future  wife,  37 ;  41 ;  law 
books  and  book  plate  of,  41 
and  49 ;  motto  of,  49 ;  disciple 
of  Murphey,  49;  becomes  a 
Representative  in  Assembly, 
50;  charactertistics  of,  50-1; 
marriage  of,  63 ;  lieutenant 
to  Charles  Fisher,  in  As- 
sembly, 65 ;  on  committees, 
65-6 ;  first  speech  of,  68-9- 
70-1-2-3-4;  devoted  to  pro- 
fession of  personal  affairs, 
76;  an  incident  in  practice 
of,  77;  anecdotes  of,  as  law- 
yer, 78-9;  fellow  lawyers  of, 


INDEX 


431 


79;  "Blandwood,"  home  of, 
80;  two  children  of,  80;  elec- 
tion to  Assembly,  second 
time,  80;  favors  General 
Jackson,  81 ;  prestige  of,  po- 
litically, 82;  and  railroad  be- 
ginnings, 83 ;  on  educational 
committees,  86 ;  presents 
Quaker  proposal  for  emanci- 
pation, 86;  other  proposals, 
86;  on  his  profession,  86;  on 
Equity  Courts,  86-7 ;  speech 
by,  on  Equity  Courts,  87-8- 
9-90-1 ;  emancipation  bill 
presented,  lost,  91  ;  and  his- 
tory, 91-2 ;  re-election,  92  ;  re- 
ceives M.A.  degree,  92 ;  no 
longer  a  lieutenant  in  As- 
sembh',  94 ;  on  Educational 
Committee,  etc.,  95-6 ;  known 
as  defender  of  schools,  re- 
ligious bodies,  widows  and 
orphans,  defectives  and  in- 
sane, slaves,  free  negroes, 
the  West,  state  history,  ju- 
dicial justice  and  exact  legal 
procedure,  and  the  ''Carl- 
ton" railroad,  sea  to  Tennes- 
see, 96;  an  elector  for  Gen- 
eral Andrew  Jackson,  100 ; 
101  ;  102;  legal  opinion  of  on 
a  duel,  102;  operations  of  at 
Leaksville,  103 ;  occasion  of 
retirement  from  public  life 
in  1828,  103-4;  trustee  of  the 
University,  104 ;  a  Jackson 
elector  again,  112;  issues  a 
circular  on  candidacy  for 
Senate,  113-118;  119;  and 
finance,  122;  and  the  unof- 
ficial railroad  convention, 
124;  and  the  N.  C.  R.  R.  and 
Beaufort  harbor,  126;  varied 
interests  of,  127-8;  and  the 
"Clinton"  letters,  132-4-5-6; 
definite  railway  leadership, 
speech  of,  136-7-8-9-40 ; 
methods  of,  143;  against 
Jackson  convention,  149 ; 
candidate  for  Constitutional 
Convention,  149;  address  of 
his  committee,  149-50 ;  mem- 
ber of  convention,  150,  ct 
seq.;  and  free  negroes,  154; 
and  the  East  in  convention, 
156;  and  Gaston,  compared, 
158;  chairman  of  Com- 
mittee of  the  Whole,  159; 
and       Non-Protestant      test, 


160-1 ;  and  Christian  profes- 
sion, 161 ;  and  the  4th  of 
July,  164;  and  Gaston,  167-8; 
as  a  designer  of  the  Consti- 
tution, 168;  a  Whig  leader, 
170;  172;  as  a  Whig  elector, 
173;  family  of,  177-8;  educa- 
tion of,  178;  and  Edgeworth 
Seminary,  178-9;  as  candi- 
date for  Governor,  183;  cot- 
ton mill  of,  184;  at  the 
Greensboro  transportation 
convention,  185;  not  at 
Raleigh  convention  of  1838. 
186 ;  and  attacks  because  of 
Quakers  and  brother,  188; 
nomination  for  Governor  by 
home  county,  et  al.,  189-90; 
formal  notification  by  State 
Convention,  and  reply,  191- 
2-3-4-5  ;  and  slavery,  195-6 ; 
and  the  national  bank,  196 ; 
and  state  issues,  196 ;  and 
Edgeworth  Seminary  open- 
ing, 197-8;  Democratic  op- 
ponent, 199 ;  canvas  by,  201- 
2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 ;  and  free 
negroes,  209;  election  as  Gov- 
ernor and  rejoicings,  209-10; 
steamboat  said  to  be  named 
for  him,  211;  and  Harrison's 
election,  212;  at  "Govern- 
ment House,"  212-13;  in- 
auguration and  address  of, 
213-14-15-16-17;  character 
of  leadership  of,  national, 
217-18;  and  Governor  Mc- 
Nutt  of  Mississippi,  218-19; 
mentioned  for  National 
President,  219;  and  other 
notable  Moreheads,  219-20; 
and  family  at  "Government 
House,"  220-21 ;  in  office,  221  ; 
and  Swamp  Land  reclama- 
tion, 221 ;  as  President  of  U. 
of  N.  C.  trustees,  222 ;  stimu- 
lus of,  to  various  state  pro- 
jects, 222;  renomination  of 
on  Clay  ticket,  223 ;  called 
"John  Moonshine  Morehead" 
by  Democratic  editor,  223 ; 
again  called  to  canvass,  224 ; 
address  of  acceptance,  225- 
27;  his  itinerary,  227-8;  ac- 
count of  debate,  228-9-30-1- 
2-3-4 ;  reception  at  home, 
236-7 ;  characteristics  of  his 
campaign,  237-8;  re-inaugur- 
ation,   238-9;    characteristics 


432 


INDEX 


of  his  administration,  239; 
state  policies  of  in  famous 
message  of,  239-63;  Ala- 
bama  Times  on,  264;  London 
Sun  on,  264 ;  other  papers  on, 
264-5  ;  installation,  266 ;  men- 
tioned for  Vice-President, 
267;  host  of  Henry  Clay, 
268-9 :  abstract  of  message 
of,  270-71;  and  his  Whig 
Assembly's  results.  271 ;  his 
departure  from  Raleigh,  271- 
2;  comments  on,  273;  and 
Graham,  273-4;  his  home  re- 
ception, 274 ;  a  County  Judge, 
274;  suggested  for  Congress, 
275 ;  various  activities  of, 
275;  and  the  Bank  of  North 
Carolina,  276;  Hon.  Edward 
Stanly  on,  276;  and  his  phil- 
anthropic projects,  277;  and 
the  University,  277-8;  pro- 
posed for  National  Senate, 
278 :  and  the  Common  School 
or  Literary  Board,  and  Deaf 
and  Dumb  School,  279 ; 
recommends  Calvin  H.  Wiley 
as  head  of  School  system, 
281 ;  and  the  Whig  National 
Convention,  281 ;  chosen 
President  of  convention.  282; 
address  of,  283-4;  closing 
address  of,  285-6-7-8;  vote 
of,  286;  notification  of  candi- 
dates, by,  288-292;  prestige 
of,  293;  at  a  railroad  meet- 
ing. 299 ;  and  the  Danville 
link,  300;  varying  activities 
of,  300 ;  at  the  Salisbury  rail- 
road convention,  300-1 ;  as 
Murphey  and  Caldwell  incar- 
nate, 301 ;  in  New  York,  302 ; 
and  Greensboro  Railroad 
Convention,  302-3-4 ;  and 
railroad  canvass,  304-5  ;  letter 
of,  305-6 ;  307 ;  success  of, 
307;  becomes  President  of 
the  N.  C.  Central  R.  R., 
308;  President  of  the  In- 
dustrial Association,  309 ; 
asking  for  geological,  min- 
eralogical  and  agricultural 
surveys,  309 ;  and  break- 
ing ground  for  N.  C.  R.  R. 
at  Greensboro,  311-12-13; 
surveys  the  Atlantic  &  North 
Carolina  R.  R.  and  the  North 
Carolina  &  Western  R.  R., 
314;  his  visions  of  trade.  314; 


and  Sheppard's  Point  at 
Beaufort,  315-16;  re-election 
of  as  Pres.  of  R.  R.,  316;  and 
political  directors,  316;  po- 
litical and  other  comments 
on,  317;  account  of  railway 
progress.  318-19;  and  poli- 
tics, 319;  re-election,  319; 
resignation  as  President  of 
N.  C.  C.  R.  R.,  321 ;  contrac- 
tor for  A.  &  N.  C.  R.  R.,  321 ; 
steamer  named  in  honor  of, 
321  ;  mentioned  for  Vice- 
president,  with  Fillmore,  321 ; 
progress  of,  on  A.  &  N.  C. 
R.  R.  contract,  2)22 ;  and  the 
dreams  of  Murphey  and 
Caldwell.  323;  and  Whig 
leadership  again,  324-5 ;  at 
the  Baltimore  "Old  Line 
Whig"  Convention,  326 ;  great 
speech  of,  326-7-8-9-30-31- 
Z2-Zi-3^2,S  \  address  in  Vir- 
ginia, 22>S-6-7 ;  letter  of,  on 
Morehead  City,  338-39;  as 
President  of  Sheppard's 
Point  Land  Company,  339- 
40;  adroit  diplomacy  of,  343- 
4 ;  succeeds  while  others 
fail;  344;  incidents  with  chil- 
dren, 345-6 ;  elected  to  lower 
house  to  promote  railroad 
development,  347-8 ;  attacks 
on,  349-50;  and  the  "great 
debate,"  351-53;  comments 
and  estimates  on.  355-62; 
portraits  of,  362;  defends  the 
Union,  363 ;  at  National  Con- 
stitutional Union  Conven- 
tion, Baltimore,  366,  et  seq.; 
leader  in,  366-7 ;  elected 
State  Senator  as  a  "Union- 
ist." 368;  in  the  Senate.  370; 
address  of,  371 ;  a  commis- 
sioner to  ihe  Peace  Confer- 
ence at  Washington,  2)72 ; 
374 ;  why  chosen,  374-5 ;  ad- 
dress of,  277 ;  and  David 
Dudley  Field  in,  378;  ad- 
dresses of,  378-9-80;  vote  of, 
in  Conference,  380-1 ;  limita- 
tion of,  382;  return  of,  and 
address  by,  382-3-4;  letter 
of  to  Chief  Justice  ■  Ruffin, 
384-5;  and  Confederate  Pro- 
visional Congress,  386,  et 
seq.;  elected  to  Confeder- 
ate Provisional  Congress, 
392;  goes  to  Richmond,  392, 


INDEX 


433 


et  seq.;  letter  of,  393-4;  on 
Financial  and  Commercial 
Committee,  394 ;  and  the 
Danville  link  and  President 
Davis,  395-6-7;  letter  of, 
397-8;  at  age  of  66,  closes 
his  public  career,  399 ;  family 
of,  399;  death  of  mother  of, 
401 ;  letters  of  to  Gen.  Bragg, 
402-4 ;  and  the  currency,  402 ; 
at  Blandwood  in  war's  clos- 
ing scenes,  404,  et  seq.;  offer 
to  President  Davis,  405 ; 
striking  scenes  in  home  of, 
described  by  daughter,  Mrs. 
W.  R.  Walker,  401-8;  con- 
sulted by  Governor  Worth, 
410;  engine  named  for  him, 
410;  and  his  railway  inter- 
ests, 411;  efforts  to  consoli- 
date state's  railroads,  411- 
12;  his  hopes,  411;  illness  of, 
412;  plans  of,  413;  vision  of, 
413 ;  after  influence  of,  413 ; 
religious  belief  of,  413; 
wishes  as  to  burial,  413-14; 
a  railway  memorial  proposed, 
414;  tributes  to,  414,  et  seq.; 
funeral  of,  414 ;  great  de- 
fense by  recalled,  414-15; 
station  on  Danville  link 
named  for  him,  416;  and 
"Modern  North  Carolina," 
417-18-19 ;  characterization 
by  Col.  G.  S.  Bradshaw  in 
1921,  419;  called  'The 
Father  of  M'odern  North 
Carolina,"  420-21 ;  and  North 
Carolina's  future,  421. 

Morehead,  Mrs.  John  Motley 
I,  as  a  young  lady,  41 ;  mar- 
riage, 63;  as  Mrs.  Governor- 
elect  Morehead,  211. 

Morehead,  Joseph,  2. 

Morehead,  Letitia  Harper,  80. 

Morehead,  Letitia  Harper, 
daughter  of  John  Motley 
Morehead  I,  177 ;  220. 

Morehead,  Major  Joseph  Mot- 
ley (and  Mrs.  Morehead) 
poem  by,  39 ;  statue  of,  39. 

Morehead,  Mary  Corrina,  177; 
208;  220;  367. 

Morehead,  Mary  Louise,  177. 

Morehead,  Samuel,  10;  104. 

Morris,    Robert,    179-180. 

Motley,  Capt.  Joseph,  6-7. 

Motley,  Obedience  (see  More- 
head,  Mrs.  John  II). 


Moseley,  Wm.  D.,  tutor,  28 ;  29. 

Mt.  Mitchell,  poem  on,  by  Al- 
fred S.  Waugh,  52. 

Mt.  Tina,   Hayti,  51. 

Muirhead,  Charles  (see  More- 
head,  Charles). 

Muirhead  clan,  origin  of,  in 
Clydesdale.  5. 

Muirhead,  David  I,  6. 

Muirhead,     David     III      (also 

.    Morehead),  2;  3;  4. 

Muirhead,  James  II. 

Muirhead,  James  III,  last  of 
the  line  to  own  Lauchope 
House,  6. 

Muirhead,  John  I,  of  Lau- 
chope and  Bullis,  4-5. 

Muirhead,  John  II,  6. 

Muirhead,  Dr.  Richard,  Sec- 
retary of  State  of  Scotland, 
5. 

Muirhead,  Sir  William,  of  Lau- 
chope I,  5. 

Muirhead,  Sir  William,  of  Lau- 
chope II,  5. 

Murphey,  Archibald  De  Bow, 
23 ;  his  statesmanlike  plans, 
27;  sketch  of,  30-31;  called 
"Father  of  Public  Improve- 
ment," 30;  Governor  Gra- 
ham, on,  31 ;  a  teacher  of 
the  law,  students  of,  31;  32; 
chosen  Judge,  33-4;  reporter 
for  Supreme  Court,  34 ;  fa- 
mous reports  of,  41-2 ;  Niles 
Register  on,  43 ;  on  finance, 
43-44;  most  famous  report 
of,  44-5-6-7-8 ;  Jared  Sparks 
on,  443 ;  characteristics  of, 
50 ;  description  of,  77-8 ; 
failure  of,  82 ;  and  state  his- 
tory, 91-2;   323. 

Nash,    Judge    Frederick,    33. 
National   Constitutional    Union 

Convention,    Baltimore,    366, 

ct  seq. 
National  currency  system   (see 

Finance). 
Negro,    colonization    of,    27-8; 

40 ;    41-2 ;    81 ;    valuation    in 

1860. 
New  Berne,  and  railroads,  306. 
Newspapers    (see   Press). 
Non-Protestant  Christians  and 

the    Constitution    of     North 

Carolina,  160. 
Norfolk,  wishes  to  join  North 

Carolina,  300. 


434 


INDEX 


North  Carolina,  structural  con- 
ditions of,  44-5-6-7-8;  prob- 
lems of,  50,  ct  seq.;  first  set- 
tlements in,  54;  eastern  falls 
and    rapids    of,    55-6;    Pied- 
mont,   55 ;     Yadkin-Catawba 
triangle  of,  56;  mountains  of 
and  plains  of,  56;  settlers,  in, 
56;  population  of,  56-7;  and 
Continental     Congress,     57 ; 
and   political   theory,    60-61 ; 
cities  of,  64;  history  of,  pro- 
posed,    91;      (See     "Carlton 
Papers")  ;     98-9;     manufac- 
tures in,  102;  103;  balance  of 
trade  in,  103 ;  influence  on  by 
Virginia,    106;   various   ideas 
in,    107;    Assembly    analysis, 
131 ;  press  of  described,  141- 
2;    political    power    in,    144; 
emigration    from,    155 ;    long 
Assembly  of,   176;    194;  and 
literacy,  235 ;  and  Presidents, 
269;  286;  growth  of,  by  1856, 
338;  and  railroad  debt,  347; 
and   powder  mills,  363 ;   and 
the   mails,   366;    in   the   Nat. 
Const.     Union      Convention, 
366,     ct    seq.;     statistics     of 
1860,  374 ;  vote  on  State  Con- 
vention in  1861,  386;  a  song 
of    in    1861,    387-8;    and   the 
"Stars   and    Stripes,"    388-9- 
90-91 ;     in     transition,     389- 
90-91 ;     prepares     for     war, 
391-2;   part   of   the   Confed- 
eracy,     391 ;      closing      war 
scenes,  400,  et  seq.;  as  "mod- 
ern," 417-19;  Western  N.  C. 
and    New    York,    419 ;    cities 
of,  419-20;  rank  of,  419-20; 
and      hydro-electric      power, 
420. 

North  Carolina  Railroad,  97; 
98;  Governor  James  Iredell 
on,  98-9-100;  108;  110;  111; 
112;  119;  120;  125;  (see 
Railroads);  126;  132-4-5-6; 
138-9-40;  144-5;  146;  169; 
177;  183;  184;  185:  186-7; 
213;  277:  and  the  Danville 
idea,  294;  295;  296;  300-4- 
5-6-7;  organization  of,  308; 
309;  310;  311;  breaking 
ground  at  Greensboro,  311- 
12-13;  progress  of,  316;  318; 
and  native  labor,  318;  open 
to  Durham,  320;  first  freight 
tariff,  320;  progress  of,  320- 


21;   last   rail  laid,  322;   359; 

consolidation      urged,      410; 

411-12;  418. 
North  Carolina  &  Western  R. 

R.,  surveyed,  314;  322;  347; 

348;   357;   366;   411;   418. 
"North  and  South,"  181;   195; 

381-2. 
"Northern  Neck,"  Va.,  2;  4. 
Northumberland    county,    Va., 

2;  4. 
Nullification,   107-8. 
"Numbers     of     Carlton"     (see 

"Carlton   Papers"). 

"O.  Henry,"  179. 

"Old  Line  Whigs,"  325. 

Old  North  State  Forever,  The, 
authorship  of,  210-11. 

Olmsted,     Professor     Denison, 

^  28 ;  75. 

"Opposition"  party,  363;  con- 
vention of,  365-6,  et  seq.: 
369. 

Paxton,  Judge  John,  H. 

Peace  Conference,  proposed, 
2)72;  in  session,  374,  ct  seq.; 
sectional  aims  in,  376;  dele- 
gates to,  376;  sentiments  of 
Mr.  Rives  of  Va.,  377-8; 
Amendment  to  Constitution 
proposed  to  Congress,  381 ; 
remarks  on,  382-3. 

"Pello,"  first  locomotive  at 
Greensboro,  321. 

Pennsylvania  railroad  pro- 
posed, 83. 

Penitentiarj^  253-4. 

Petersburg  and  Roanoke  rail- 
road, 112;  (see  Railroads); 
120:  126;  171. 

Philadelphia  Whig  National 
Convention  of  1848,  281-2-3- 
4-5-6-7. 

"Philanthropic"  and  "Dialectic" 
Societies,  27. 

"Piedmont,"  definition,  1;  2; 
plateau,  55;  railway,  348; 
355;  398. 

Pitcher,  Molly,  6. 

Pittsylvania  county,  Va.,  2. 

Political  science,  as  discovered 
and  formulated  in  America, 
59  ;  "independence  and  union" 
discussed,  60;  and  the  Con- 
vention of  1835,  157;  in 
North  Carolina,  163. 


INDEX 


435 


Political  parties,  feeling  in, 
102;  Whigs  and  Jacksonians, 
144;  170;  173;  174;  (see 
Whigs)  ;  (see  Democrats)  ; 
175;  180;  239;  241;  281;  281- 
8 ;  295-6 ;  breaking  up,  325 ; 
and  railroads,  in  N.  C.,  347 ; 
349;  363;  364;  365;  368; 
381-2. 

Polk,  Gen.,  of  Rowan,  170. 

Polk,  President,  25;  29;  276; 
279-80. 

Population,  of  North  Carolina, 
56-7;  58;  of  cities  in  1821, 
64;  68;  negro,  88-9;  106-7; 
212. 

Port,  for  North  Carolina,  45 ; 
50;  53-4;  (see  Beaufort); 
(see  Wilmington)  ;  185. 

Portsmouth  and  Norfolk  lines, 
177;    (see  Railroads). 

Presbyterians,  in  Guilford 
county,  38. 

Presidential  Candidates,  Whig, 
1^8,  284. 

Presidential  nominations,  mode 
of,  81. 

Press,  of  North  Carolina,  141- 
2. 

Prince  William  county,  Va.,  2. 

Principle  or  Power,  in  Con- 
stitutional   Convention,    156. 

Property  representation,  155-6. 

Public  school  system  (see  Edu- 
cation). 

Quakers  and  Indiana,  81. 

Quakers,  in  politics,  32;  35;  36; 
37;  46;  47;  48;  49;  50;  51; 
56;  67;  (See  Quaker,  Revo- 
lution, etc.)  ;  92;  105;  118; 
126;  and  slavery,  164;  257; 
351. 

Quakers,  and  slavery,  40;  42- 
3;  80-1;  87;  187;  188. 

Quarry  railroad  (see  Experi- 
mental Railroad). 

Queen  Mary  Stuart,  5. 

"Rachel,"  a  remarkable  negro 
slave,  7. 

Railroads,  beginning  of,  82-3 ; 
Piedmont  trans-state  line 
proposed,  92 ;  and  the  "Carl- 
ton Papers"  of  President 
Joseph  Caldweli;  92-3-4 ;  96 ; 
97;  various  projects,  97;  "ad- 
dress" on,  97;  "Experi- 
mental"  at  Fayetteville  pro- 


posed, 97 ;  a  remedy,  103 ; 
105-106;  108-9;  (see  Experi- 
mental Railroad)  ;  119;  121; 
vs.  water  routes,  124 ;  126- 
7;  128;  129;  130;  131-132; 
and  Guilford  county,  132; 
"Clinton"  letters  on,  132-4- 
5-6;  Guilford  meeting,  137- 
8;  Wilmington  and  Raleigh 
line,  144-5;  168;  other  lines, 
169;  promotion  of,  170;  Wil- 
mington &  Raleigh  or  Wel- 
don  road,  171 ;  stocks  of, 
171-2;  172;  173;  176-177; 
181-2;  183;  westward,  184; 
first  railways  completed,  199- 
20O-201;  213;  243-4;  244; 
245;  of  1846,  277;  280;  294; 
295;  296;  298;  299;  Gaston- 
Wcldon  link,  300,  301;  302; 
303 ;  304 ;  305  ;  306 ;  307 ;  308- 
10;  (see  N.C.R.  R.)  ;  314; 
statistics  of,  314;  progress  of, 
316;  political  directors,  316- 
17;  318;  319;  statistics,  319; 
322 ;  failures  of,  344 ;  suc- 
cess of,  in  N.  C,  344;  347; 
348;  350;  408;  (see  Danville 
Link)  ;  411. 

Raleigh,-  64;  and  Railroads, 
145;   (see  Railroads)  ;  186. 

Raleigh  and  Gaston  Railroad, 
169;  170;  171;  172;  177; 
trains  on,  183-4;  186;  187; 
first  train  of,  in  Raleigh,  200- 
201;  213;  242-3;  244;  278; 
294-  314. 

Ransom,  M.  W.,  372. 

"Regulators,"   13;   38. 

Reid,  David  Settle,  37;  308; 
372. 

Republican  party,  337 ;  (see  Re- 
publican-Abolitionist) ;  (see 
"Black    Republican"). 

"RepubHcan,"  principles,  186; 
name  used  by  both  parties, 
324. 

Repudiation,  254-5. 

Revolution,  The  (see  Conti- 
nental   Congress). 

Richmond  &  Danville  R.  R., 
completion  of,  322;  (see 
Danville  link). 

"Rip  Van  Winkle,"  epithet, 
107. 

Roanoke,  Danville  &  Junction 
R.  R.,  172. 

Roanoke  Valley,  1 ;  2 ;  and 
Norfolk  trade,  43;  and  Dan 


436 


INDEX 


population,  57;  and  federal 
leaders,  60 ;  98-9 ;  as  railroad 
objection,  105;  canal  at 
rapids  of,  106;  110-11;  124; 
169;  183. 

Rockingham  county,  name  and 
character,  36. 

Ruffin,  Thomas,  31;  33;  372; 
391-2. 

Rush,  Dr.  Benjamin,  13. 

Salisbury  Convention  (rail- 
road),'300. 

San  Domingo  and  free  negroes, 
165. 

Saunders,  Romulus  M.,  186; 
199 ;  canvas  by,  201-2-3-4-5- 
6-7-8-9;  303;  309. 

Sauro  Indians,  8. 

Schools,  common,  187  (see 
Education). 

Scotch  and  Scotch-Irish,  in 
Guilford  county,  37. 

Scott  &  Graham,  nomination 
of,  314. 

Sea-to-Tennessee  railroad,  93. 

Seawell,  Judge  Henry,  33 ;  34. 

Secession.  309;  310;  311;  313; 
(see  "Old  Line  Whig"  Con- 
vention. Baltimore)  ;  364; 
368;  369;  370;  387;  389-90. 

Senate  and  Commons  ratio, 
157. 

Settle,  Thomas,  10-11;  36. 

Settlers,  in  North  Carolina,  56. 

Sheppard's  Point,  133 ;  315 ; 
(see  Morehead  City)  ;  Shep- 
pard's Point  Land  Company, 
339. 

Sherman,  John,  364. 

Slavery,  in  Guilford  county,  39. 

Slaves,  trade  in  North  Caro- 
lina, 91 ;  status  of  discussed 
in  convention  of  1835,  157; 
and  early  Abolitionism,  168; 
population  in   1840,  212. 

Smith,  Mrs.  (Rev.)  J.  Henry, 
paper  by,  408. 

Song,  a  North  Carolina,  of 
1861,  387-8. 

South  Carolina,  370. 

Southern  Railway,  the,  313 ; 
(see  N.  C.  R.  R.). 

"Southern  Rights  Party," 
Goldsboro,  N.  C,  in  1861 ; 
388. 

Spaight,  Richard  Dobbs,  Jr., 
101;  155. 

Spray,  N.  C,  9;  103. 


Standard,  Raleigh,  182. 

Stanly,   Hon.   Edward,   276. 

Stanly,  John.  Speaker,  85. 

"Stars  and  Stripes,"  carried  in 
1861,  in  N.  C,  391. 

State  Bank,  43   (see  Finance). 

State  Capitol  of  1794;  63^; 
(see  Capitol). 

State  Convention  of  N.  C,  of 
1860-61,  371;  391. 

State  Fair  (see  Industrial  Con- 
vention). 

State  Senators,  and  freehold 
vote,  293. 

State's  natural  four  divisions, 
74. 

Statistics,  on  North  Carolina, 
46-7-8;  population  in  1860, 
374-5. 

"Station"  and  "depot,"  320. 

Statue  of  Washington,  66;  74- 
5. 

Stokes,   Gen.   Mountfort,   101. 

Strange,  Judge,  175. 

Sub-Treasurv  system,  181 ;  re- 
peal of,  220;  276. 

Supreme  Court,  and  Superior 
Court,  32 ;  33. 

Swaim,  Lyndon,  editor,  sketch 
by,  77-8. 

Swain.  David  L.,  Assembly 
leader,  85;  124;  128;  in  Con- 
stitutional Convention,  153, 
cf  scq.:  182;  183;  187;  300; 
301:  372;  373;  374-5;  409. 

Swamp  land  reclamation,  85 ; 
128;  221. 

Swarthmore  (Pa.)  quarry  rail- 
road, earliest,  83. 

Swiss  settlements,  56. 


Tariff,  258-9-60. 

Taylor,  Chief  Justice  John 
Louis,  32. 

Taylor,  General,  victories  of, 
279 ;  as  Presidential  candi- 
date, 279  ;  281 ;  284 ;  nomina- 
tion of,  285;  281-8;  notifica- 
tion of.  288-9 ;  290-1-2-3. 

Tennessee,  57 ;  67-8. 

Texas,  175;  276. 

Thompson,  of  Kecoughtan,  3. 

Toomer.  Judge  John  D.,  33. 

Trade  Centers,  45. 

Transportation,  45  (see  Rail- 
roads) ;  rail  vs.  w^ater,  124; 
187. 

fryon.  Governor,  13. 


INDEX 


437 


Turner,  Keren-happuch  (Nor- 
man), monument  to,  6. 

Turnpikes,   247. 

Tyler,  John,  candidate,  171 ; 
defection  of,  220;  376. 

Union  sentiment,  364 ;  365 ; 
369;   in  counties,  369;  387. 

University  of  North  Carolina, 
14;  early  courses  in,  19;  and 
Caldwell's  School  compared, 
19-20 ;  described,  20-21 ;  edu- 
cational theories  in,  22;  de- 
scribed in  1812,  23;  under 
President  Chapman,  24-5 ; 
customs  of,  25-26 ;  outbreak 
of  students  in,  26;  "societies" 
in,  27;  faculty  of  1817,  28; 
prominent  trustees  of,  104; 
252. 

United  States  Bank  (see  Bank 
of  United  States). 

United  States  Bank  of  Penn- 
sylvania, 219. 

t 

Van  Buren,  President,  181. 

Vance,  Gov.,  400. 

Venable,     Hon.     A.     W.,     and 

secession,  311 ;  369. 
Virginia,  influence  of,  106. 

Walker,    Wm.    R.,    282;    Mrs., 

striking  paper  of,  401-8. 
War's  closing  scenes,  in  North 

Carolina,  404,  et  seq. 
Washington     (Madison,    Mon- 
roe   &    Marshall)    birthplace 

of,  2;  4. 
Washington     Monument,     173; 

300. 
Water  front  of  North  Carolina 

(see  "Lost  Atlantis"). 
Waynesboro   (see  Goldsboro). 
Webster,  Daniel,  279. 
Weldon,    a    railroad    terminal 

105-6;   link  to  Gaston,  244, 

314. 
West  vs.  East,  58 ;  59 ;  60 ;  61 ; 

67-8;  75;  81;  82;  88;  89;  96; 

106;  109-110;  118;  119;  130; 

140-41;   145;   149;   150;   155; 

156;     157;  _  158;     162^;     and 

Pennsylvania,  163 ;  165  ;  168 ; 


173;  174;  175;  177;  183;  186; 
187;  196;  217-18;  294,  et 
scq.;  345-362. 

Western  Railroad  (Fayette- 
ville),  320. 

Whigs  of  1834,  and  1776,  144; 
145;  148;  168;  170;  171;  173; 
174;   (see  Political  Parties)  ; 
leaders,  175;  180;  convention 
of.   180-181;    182:    185;    186; 
187;    188;    189-90;    191-2-3- 
4-5 ;    Morehead's    leadership 
of,  199 ;  song  of.  207-8 ;  State 
success  of,  209-10;  song,  210- 
11;  National  success  of,  212 
misfortunes,  220;  resignation 
in  Tyler's  Cabinet,  220;  223 
Convention  of    (State),  223 
address    of    Gov.    Morehead 
225-7;    and    North   Carolina 
239 ;  269  :  273 ;  278 ;  279 ;  280 
and   Philadelphia  Convention 
281-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-90-1-2 

.  294,  et  scq.:  307;  308;  314 
319;  321;  324;  325;  326-35 
335-7;  345-9;  363;  365. 

White,  Judge  Hugh  L.,  148-9 
170;  171;  173;  199. 

Wiley,  Calvin  H.,  281 ;  314. 

Willing,  Thomas,  head  of  bank 
of  the  nation,  179;   180. 

Wilmington  (see  Wilmington 
&  Raleigh  R.  R.)  ;  and  other 
ports  compared,  185 ;  359. 

Wilmington  and  Manchester  R. 
R.,  302;  320. 

Wilmington    and   Raleigh   rail- 
road   (see    Railroads),    171 
172;    173;    176;    181-2;   200 
201 ;  213  ;  243  ;  296 ;  297 ;  301 
314 ;  347 ;  359 ;  366 ;  369  ;  400. 

Wilson,  James,  of  Philadel- 
phia, 59-60;  74;  as  chief 
father  of  the  National  Con- 
stitution, 163;  and  finance, 
179. 

Worth,  Rev.  Daniel,  364. 

Worth,  Governor  Jonathan, 
410. 

Yancey,  Bartlett,  31. 
Yarborough      Hotel,     Raleigh, 

279. 
Yorktown,  39. 


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